Roughly a year before he received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1979, John Cheever was unhappy. In the following letter, addressed to his unnamed protege and secret lover, Cheever expresses his misgivings about literary stardom. For most of his life, Cheever kept his bisexuality a secret from even those closest to him.
Cedar Lane
Thursday (May, 1978)
Dear—–,
I am miserable, horney, lonely, depressed and unshaven and it all must be because I smoke too much. This is the beginning of the year and I’ve spaded the garden, brush-hooked the woods and will point some stones this afternoon but I feel like shit. At nightfall I will put on my only suit and drive to Caldors in Bedford Hills where I will be displayed, rather like an egg-beater, somewhere between Tobacco Shoppe and Household Utensils. Twenty-five book-sellers with shopping bags filled with out of print editions will appear and by the time I have autographed these all the lonely, lonely people who hoped to meet a man as lonely as they will have to go home. I do wish you were around. I thought you were going to spend the summer in —– but now I don’t know where you’ll be.
This is the season of accolades and the more I get the crosser Mary [his wife] becomes. She hasn’t spoken for weeks. Saul Bellow tells me that women’s literary ambitions are inestimable and his fourth wife is a Romanian mathamatician [sic] who can barely read. They seem fairly happy. I am not. I plan to spend one week each month away from here but May is congested and in June I get a Big Prize about which I am not allowed to speak although I would speak to you about it if you were here or I were there or we were together somewhere else.
Love,
John
FURTHER READING
For more information on John Cheever’s lovers, read the Guardian‘s article on Cheever: A Life.