![]() ![]() His life has been nothing if not picked over. But in the years after his death a stream of revelations about his life poured into the public domain, muddying the blue-bright waters of his legacy with distressing efficiency. How could she not be? John Cheever died in 1982, at the height of his fame as the bestselling, Pulitzer prize-winning author of five novels and some of the most brilliant short stories ever published. Of course, she is more than prepared for my questions. ![]() "Wait till you see the house! This beautiful building that is now the ugliest place on earth. I have this weird family worship." She peers determinedly through the misted windscreen. "Oh, yes," she says, when I mention this. Rather to my amazement, she is enjoying our talk, which is all about her father, John Cheever, the great American writer. Barely have we left the city than I notice that her face is suffused with a warm, proprietorial glow. Susan, who is 65, begins our journey with the slightly ragged air of one who has packed for a long trip a little too fast her ultimate destination is Bennington College, Vermont, where she teaches non-fiction writing. We are going to visit the stone-ended Dutch Colonial she lived in as a teenager, a house her 90-year-old mother, Mary, still miraculously inhabits. O n a damp and unseasonably cold summer morning, Susan Cheever and I leave her apartment in New York and drive to Ossining, in Westchester County.
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