John Cheever

Stunning and brutally powerful, Falconer tells the story of a man named Farragut, his crime and punishment, and his struggle to remain a man in a universe bent on beating him backwards into childhood. Only John Cheever could deliver these grand themes with the irony, unforced eloquence, and exhilarating humor that make Falconer such a triumphant work of the moral imagination.

Neddy Merrill decides to swim home from a friend's pool party, traveling from fashionable swimming pool to swimming pool on a perfect mid-summer's day. But as night falls and the season begins to change, Neddy sinks from optimistic bliss to utter despair.

Innocent, old-fashioned, self-aware, Cheever's people are summoned by strange and improbable events to ponder the values they have been taught to trust...decency, common sense, nostalgia, even truth. Stunned by these encounters, they nevertheless survive. A worn-out poet finds peace in his heart as he lays his Lermontov medal at the foot of the sacred angel; a prosperous suburbanite contemplates his predicament when his wife joins the cast of a nude show; a guileless and romantic well digger, anxious for a bride, visits Russia, falls in love and returns home "singing the unreality blues"; and a miserably married man fantasizes a beautiful lover who comes to him for strength, love and counsel while he tends the charcoal grill in the backyard.

Here are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called "the greatest generation." From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in "The Enormous Radio" to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" and "The Swimmer," Cheever tells us everything we need to know about "the pain and sweetness of life." Goodbye, my brother -- The common day -- The enormous radio -- O city of broken dreams -- The Hartleys -- The Sutton Place story -- The summer farmer -- Torch song -- The pot of gold -- Clancy in the Tower of Babel -- Christmas is a sad season for the poor -- The season of divorce -- The chaste Clarissa -- The cure -- The superintendent -- The children -- The sorrows of gin -- O youth and beauty! -- The day the pig fell into the well -- The five-forty-eight -- Just one more time -- The housebreaker of Shady Hill -- The bus to St. James's -- The worm in the apple -- The trouble of Marcie Flint -- The bella lingua -- The Wrysons -- The country husband -- The duchess -- The scarlet moving van -- Just tell me who it was -- Brimmer -- The golden age -- The lowboy -- The music teacher -- A woman without a country -- The death of Justina -- Clementina -- Boy in Rome -- A miscellany of characters that will not appear -- The chimera -- The seaside houses -- The angel of the bridge -- The brigadier and the golf widow -- A vision of the world -- Reunion -- An educated American woman -- Metamorphoses -- Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin -- Montraldo -- The ocean -- Marito in città -- The geometry of love -- The swimmer -- The world of apples -- Another story -- Percy -- The fourth alarm -- Artemis, the honest well digger -- Three stories -- The jewels of the Cabots.