As National Short Story week draws to a close, Chris Power considers a master of the form who brings something shadowy and troubled – not to mention enchanted – to his depictions of suburban New York
When John Cheever's editor suggested an omnibus collection of his short stories, the writer was nonplussed. "Why do you want to do that?" he asked. "All those stories have already been published." The resulting book, The Stories of John Cheever (1978), became one of the bestselling short story collections of all time, winning its author a National Book award and a Pulitzer. But it didn't just buttress Cheever's uncertain reputation. As Robert Morace notes, it "revived interest in the short story on the part of publishers and readers, making it both commercially more viable and critically more respectable".
Continue reading...