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68e72b4
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There was some faint coughing, a moan, and then a man spoke. "Are you all right, darling?" he asked. "Yes," a woman said wearily. "Yes, I'm all right, I guess," and then she added with great feeling, "But you know, Charlie, I don't feel like myself anymore. Sometimes there are about fifteen or twenty minutes in the week when I feel like myself. I don't like to go to another doctor, because the doctor's bills are so awful already, but I just..
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John Cheever |
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d75e863
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The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming--Diana and Helen--and I saw their uncovered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful, and full of grace, and I watched the naked women walk out of the sea.
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John Cheever |
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49af516
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Paint me a small railroad station then, ten minutes before dark. Beyond the platform are the waters of the Wekonsett River, reflecting a somber afterglow. The architecture of the station is oddly informal, gloomy but unserious, and mostly resembles a pergola, cottage or summer house although this is a climate of harsh winters. The lamps along the platform burn with a nearly palpable plaintiveness. The setting seems in some way to be at the ..
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John Cheever |
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b1b60b9
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Trace listened to the story, but how could he get excited? Francis had no powers that would let him re-create a brush with death - particularly in the atmosphere of a commuting train, journeying through a sunny countryside where already, in the slum gardens, there were signs of harvest.
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John Cheever |
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83a5eb6
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You might say that he had lost the gift of evoking the perfumes of life: sea water, the smoke of burning hemlock, and the breasts of women. He had damaged, you might say, the ear's innermost chamber, where we hear the heavy noise of the dragon's tail moving over the dead leaves.
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John Cheever |
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050a47a
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I did another commercial. Don't lose your loved ones, I wrote, because of excessive radioactivity. Don't be a wallflower at the dance because of strontium 90 in your bones. Don't be a victim of fallout. When the tart on Thirty-sixth Street gives you the big eye does your body stride off in one direction and your imagination in another? Does your mind follow her up the stairs and taste her wares in revolting detail while your flesh goes off ..
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John Cheever |
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39adc42
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He saw the role of the serious writer as both lofty and practical in the same instant. He used to say that literature was one of the first indications of civilization. He used to say that a fine piece of prose could not only cure a depression, it could clear up a sinus headache. Like many great healers, he meant to heal himself.
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John Cheever |
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db16dad
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This is being written abord the S.S. Augustus, three days at sea. My suitcase is full of peanut butter, and I am a fugitive from the suburbs of all large cities.
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John Cheever |
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9d43f63
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Adultery and cruelty have well-marked courses of action but what can a man do when his wife wants to appear naked on the stage?
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John Cheever |
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0e9877b
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He might have been compared to a summer's day, particularly the last hours of one.
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John Cheever |
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f05b660
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The city is full of accidental revelation, half-heard cries for help, and strangers who will tell you everything at the first suspicion of sympathy,
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John Cheever |
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8c4aef0
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Like most incurable fibbers, she had an extravagant regard for the truth, which she expressed by sending up signals meant to indicate that she was lying.
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John Cheever |
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45aa7fc
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years of resolute self-denial, instead of rewarding him with reserves of fortitude, had left him more than ordinarily susceptible to temptation.
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John Cheever |
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86f8566
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You might have said that his look was thoughtful until you realized that he was not a thoughtful man. It was the earnest and contained look of those who are a little hard of hearing or a little stupid.
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John Cheever |
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b27590c
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Damoclean, but these were people without pretense or affectation,
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John Cheever |
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45f8efd
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Seated at the table, high in her firmament of gin, she looked critically at her brother and his wife, remembering some real or imagined injustice of her youth, for with any proximity the constellations of some families generate among themselves an asperity that nothing can sweeten.
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John Cheever |
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d656d1a
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There is something universal about being stood up in a city restaurant between one and two--a spiritual no-man's-land, whose blasted trees, entrenchments, and ratholes we all share, disarmed by the gullibility of our hearts.
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John Cheever |
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f6eb099
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Mixed with the love we hold for our native country is the fact that it is the place where we were raised, and, should anything have gone a little wrong in this process, we will be reminded of this fault, by the scene of the crime, until the day we die.
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John Cheever |
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aad74e2
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Each year, we rent a house at the edge of the sea and drive there in the first of the summer--with the dog and cat, the children, and the cook--arriving at a strange place a little before dark. The journey to the sea has its ceremonious excitements, it has gone on for so many years now, and there is the sense that we are, as in our dreams we have always known ourselves to be, migrants and wanderers--travelers, at least, with a traveler's ac..
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summer-house
summertime
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John Cheever |
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342b442
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The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable, even to a purblind waiter,
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John Cheever |
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3aa1bd6
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And walking back from the river I remember the galling loneliness of my adolescence, from which I do not seem to have completely escaped. It is the sense of the voyeur, the lonely, lonely boy with no role in life but to peer in at the lighted windows of other people's contentment and vitality. It seems comical -- farcical -- that, having been treated so generously, I should be struck with this image of a kid in the rain walking along the ro..
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John Cheever |
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a470478
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Oh, God, you bore me this morning," my wife said. "I've been bored for the last six years," I said. I took a cab to the airport and an afternoon plane back to the city. We had been married twelve years and had been lovers for two years before our marriage, making a total of fourteen years in all that we had been together, and I never saw her again."
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John Cheever |
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442c770
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Sembrava, mentre pattinavo al centro del laghetto, che il numero di stelle che riuscivo a vedere si fosse moltiplicato. Erano disseminate fitte come una gettata di bucaneve.
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family
love
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John Cheever |
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be4bb39
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Nils's gardens no longer bore any relationship to the needs of the house. Each spring he plowed and planted acres of vegetables and flowers. The coming up of the asparagus shoots was the signal for a hopeless race between the vegetables and Mrs. Garrison's table. Nils, embittered by the waste that he himself was the author of, came each evening to the kitchen door to tell the cook that unless they are more peas, more strawberries, more bean..
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John Cheever |
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f927277
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JIM AND IRENE Westcott were the kind of people who seem to strike that satisfactory average of income, endeavor, and respectability that is reached by the statistical reports in college alumni bulletins.
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John Cheever |
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e5419b1
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Merrill poteva essere paragonato a una giornata d'estate, in particolare alle sue ultime ore, e anche se non aveva una racchetta da tennis ne una borsa da vela, evocava un'immagine di gioventu sportiva e di tempo clemente. Aveva appena finito di nuotare e ora respirava profondamente, come se volesse mandar giu nei polmoni tutte le componenti di quel momento, il calore del sole e l'intensita del suo piacere; sembrava che tutte venissero aspi..
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John Cheever |
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6b03c5d
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Justina's life had been exemplary, but by ending it she seemed to have disgraced us all.
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John Cheever |
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af1574e
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Oh what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless? The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimmin..
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John Cheever |
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b5154af
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Oh, how wonderful and rich and
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John Cheever |
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f124335
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These stories date from my Honorable Discharge from the Army at the end of World War II. Their order is, to the best of my memory, chronological and the most embarrassingly immature pieces have been dropped. These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybo..
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John Cheever |
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b1dc703
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For lovers, touch is metamorphosis. All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better. That part of their experience that is distinct and separate, the totality of the years before they met, is changed, is redirected toward this moment. They feel they have reached an identical point of intensity, an ecstasy of rightness that they command in every part, and any recollection that occurs to th..
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John Cheever |
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3573708
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The eternal puzzle of why people do that which is not in their interest, and have a desire to lose what is most precious to them, makes Cheever fascinated by the deepest destructions.
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John Cheever |
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7c38c41
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Even a selected display of one's early work will be a naked history of one's struggle to receive an education in economics and love.
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John Cheever |
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6791f1f
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Lo que sentia por Eduardo era mas parecido a la nostalgia que al espiritu aventurero del amor tradicional, pero no era un sentimiento menos fuerte. Comprendio que, si verdaderamente buscaba la pureza, nunca la encontraria en si mismo.
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John Cheever |
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2719de3
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Nada le esperaba en su apartamento. No habia ni una mujer, ni un hombre, ni un perro, ni un gato, y probablemente la cinta de su contestador automatico estaria en blanco; ademas, el barrio donde vivia se habia convertido en un lugar anonimo, como de transito, por lo que tampoco habria camareros o tenderos que le saludasen. Encendio la radio, pero la unica musica que pudo encontrar fue musica disco, la musica disco de esas discotecas que hab..
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John Cheever |
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e306c58
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Those must be the Fullers, in 11-E," Irene said. "I knew they were giving a party this afternoon. I saw her in the liquor store. Isn't this too divine? Try something else. See if you can get those people in 18-C."
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John Cheever |
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2216f35
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so visibly shaken by some recent loss of principle that it would have been noticed by a stranger across the aisle
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John Cheever |
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ec8b74a
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Parece restregar y planchar con fervor penitencial, aunque no se me ocurre que es lo que considera que ha hecho mal.
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John Cheever |
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c40aa28
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There were Italians, Finns, Jews, Negroes, Shropshiremen, Cubans--anyone who had heeded the voice of liberty--and they were dressed with that sumptuary abandon that European caricaturists record with such bitter disgust. Yes, there were grandmothers in shorts, big-butted women in knitted pants, and men wearing such an assortment of clothing that it looked as if they had dressed hurriedly in a burning building. But this, as I say, is my own ..
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John Cheever |
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ef99c0a
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At her dressing table putting on earrings. She is a pretty woman in the prime of life, and her ignorance of financial necessity is complete. Her neck is graceful, her breasts gleamed as they rose in the cloth of her dress, and, seeing the decent and healthy delight she took in her own image, I could not tell her that we were broke. She had sweetened much of my life, and to watch her seemed to freshen the wellsprings of some clear energy in ..
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John Cheever |
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1226b5b
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His stepmother -wearing a nightgown for comfort and a flowered hat for looks- had spent her days sitting in their parlor window in Baltimore drinking sherry out of a coffee cup.
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John Cheever |
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6b65dea
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When you get to be as old and as rich as I am, it's hard to meet people.
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John Cheever |
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40c0464
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I felt that he was a captive of financial and sentimental commitments, like every other man I know, and that he was no more free to fall in love with a strange woman he saw on a street corner than he was to take a walking trip through French Guiana or to recommence his life in Chicago under an assumed name.
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man
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John Cheever |
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ed668a5
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The belief that a crooked heart is betrayed by palsies, tics, and other infirmities dies hard.
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John Cheever |