Reviews for The Wapshot Chronicle

The average rating for The Wapshot Chronicle based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-24 00:00:00 Vicki Nichols The author was a famous short story writer and this was his first attempt at a novel. It won the National Book Award for 1958. It’s kind of a coming of age story of two young men, although most of the plot follows not their youth, but the start of their careers. Their father was a river boat captain so there’s a bit of sea lore. We’re in a small New England sea town at the turn of the century, a time when autos are replacing horses. There’s a focus on change: “…nothing was anymore what it aimed to be or what it would be in the end and the house that had meant to express family pride was now a funeral parlor, the house that had meant to express worldly pride was a rooming house, Ursuline nuns lived in the castle that was meant to express the pride of avarice…” There are a lot of accidental deaths by drowning or in car crashes. Mostly the story is of two brothers interspersed with excerpts from a diary kept by their father that chronicles his life and gives us family secrets. An unmarried aunt controls the family fortune. When she sees her two nephews begin fooling around with the local girls she orders them out into the world. One goes to New York and one to Washington DC. They both eventually marry and end up in troubled marriages. The story is quasi-autobiographical. Cheever had a brother to whom he said he was “ungainly attached.” He grew up in a New England seaport (Quincy, Mass.) with ship captain ancestors. In the story his mother becomes the support for the family by opening a gift shop in the derelict ship; in real life Cheever’s mother did the same in a failed shoe factory. His aunt controlled the family fortune. The main way the story seems autobiographical is in Cheever’s portrayal of the two marriages. The men are perfectly fine; the two women are a bundle of anxieties and almost nuts. This parallels Cheever’s life where he insisted that his wife go with him for psychological counseling (avant garde at that time). When the psychologist told him “John, YOU’RE the problem,” Cheever never went back. Cheever was manic depressive, an alcoholic and had a series of affairs. Late in life he had bisexual affairs. His daughter Susan Cheever chronicled this family life in her own memoir in 2001, Home Before Dark For 1954 it contains what would have been considered graphic sex for that time. and in fact Cheever holds the “honor” of the first allowance of the f-word in selections chosen by Book of the Month Club. (As a side note it is interesting that “three Johns” pushed the boundaries of explicit sex in popular American works. In addition to Cheever (1912-1982), there was John O’Hara (1905-1970) and then John Updike (1932-2009). Late in the book is a chapter about one of the brothers having a homosexual experience. It’s the 1950’s so here’s how Cheever begins that chapter: “And now we come to the unsavory or homosexual part of our tale [those words are in italics in the book] and any disinterested reader is encouraged to skip.” Some examples of good writing: “I mean he doesn’t have anything nice to remember and so he borrows other people’s memories.” “…he was much shorter than his wife – a jolly pink-faced man with a quietness that might have been developed to complement the noise she made.” “…the power beautiful women have of evoking landscapes – a sense of rueful distance – as if their eyes had come to rest on a horizon that had never been seen by any man.” A pretty good read but it drags a bit and we have the unrealistic portrayal of the marriages. I’ll give it a 3. Cheever wrote a sequel, The Wapshot Scandal, but I think I’ll pass and perhaps read some of his short stories. Postcard of Quincy Market in 1904 from pinterest.com Photo of the author from nytimes.com

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-07 00:00:00 John Howell Jr … we might climb the stairs and pry into things of more pertinence. There is Leander’s bureau drawer, where we find a withered rose – once yellow – and a wreath of yellow hair, the butt end of a Roman candle that was fired at the turn of the century, a boiled shirt on which an explicit picture of a naked woman is drawn in red ink, a necklace made of champagne corks and a loaded revolver. 4 ½ stars John Cheever (1912-1982) sold a short story to The New Yorker in 1935, the first of many. His reputation as a short story writer rose rapidly, and his first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle , won the National Book award in 1958. He later published three other novels: The Wapshot Scandal (1965), Bullet Park (1969), and Falconer (1977). But he was primarily known for his short stories; some critics have ventured that Cheever is one of the most important short fiction writers of the 20th century, and he has been referred to as “the Chekhov of the suburbs”. Born in New York, Cheever’s stories are set in Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, and the shore towns along the coast that stretches from New York City to Boston. Connecting Cheever’s stories to the suburban world does not mean that he romanticized the suburban lifestyle as it developed in the decades in which he matured and wrote. Wiki notes that many of his works also express “a nostalgia for a vanishing way of life, characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community” in the smaller towns along this coast, “as opposed to the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia”. The Wapshot Chronicle Being a chronicle, we might surmise that the novel tells of “important historical events”; but this would be ironic, for the events told in the third person narrative have significance only for the characters living them, and a few friends and neighbors in the mythical town of St. Botolphs, located just inland of the coast mentioned above. Those characters being the father Leander Wapshot, the mother (Mrs. Wapshot to us, though Leander reveals in his inner dialogues that her name is Sarah), Leander’s two teen-aged sons Moses and Coverly, and Leander’s “cousin” (though with a slight complication involving separate grandmothers) Honora. She, Honora, plays a role outsized for a cousin, resulting from the facts that (a) she inherited quite a sum, (b) she was brought up by Leander’s father (one of her “uncles” - with that same complication), (c) she has never married, (d) she desires to leave her wealth (which is also a sometime loan source to Leander) to his sons, but (e) only on condition that they themselves produce male heirs. A telling fork in the chronicle results from Honora unfortunately witnessing a happening of sexual nature involving one of the sons. But that previously mentioned Cheever theme of “nostalgia for a vanishing way of life” was what I soon sensed myself as I began reading the novel. Actual dates are not mentioned often, especially in the first chunk, yet as I read Cheever’s strange and poignant prose, I felt that I was reading a picture – a Norman Rockwell painting illustrating small town New England life in the first third of the century. Here read a lengthy passage about the Wapshot house - set rather dilapidatedly on its acreage some distance outside St. Botolphs - and its residents. The house is easy enough to describe but how to write a summer’s day in an old garden? ... It is dusk and the family has gathered … Leander is drinking bourbon and the parrot hangs in a cage by the kitchen door. A cloud passes over the low sun, darkening the valley, and they feel a deep and momentary uneasiness as if they apprehended how darkness can fall over the continents of the mind. The wind freshens and then they are all cheered as if this reminded them of their recuperative powers … But as we see the Wapshots, spread out in their rose garden above the river, listening to the parrot and feeling the balm of those evening winds that, in New England, smell so of maidenly things – of orris root and toilet soap and rented rooms, wet by an open window in a thunder shower; of chamber pots and sorrel soap and roses and gingham and lawn; of choir robes and copies of the New Testament bound in limp morocco and pastures that are for sale, blooming now with rue and fern – as we see the flowers, staked by Leander with broken hockey sticks and mop and broom handles, as we see the scarecrow in the cornfield wears the red coat of the defunct St. Botolphs Horse Guards and that the blue water of the river below them seems mingled with our history, it would be wrong to say as an architectural photographer once did, after photographing the side door, “It’s just like a scene from J.P. Marquand.” The adventures of Leander’s sons, as they set sail from St. Botolphs to make their own stabs at life, as well as the continuing events of Leander, Mrs. Wapshot, and Honora back in St. Botolphs, form the larger part of the Wapshot family’s chronicle. Though it is not heart-poundingly exciting, not saturated with either sex or violence, there are some surprisingly dark, or perhaps better described as foreboding and unexpected, happenings. These not only lend some spice to the consistently interesting read, but are (wiki tells us) another characteristic of Cheever’s outlook – this darker streak apparently connected with Cheever’s hidden homosexuality, and associated feelings of guilt at this concealed inner life; the agony of this guilt assuaged by drink. There is an interview with his daughter published in the Guardian ( ) in which she expresses very positive feelings towards her father, and a sadness that he felt so much guilt about something that has ceased to produce that shame/guilt burden so many were condemned to until more enlightened recent years. Some readers will not be particularly thrilled with this rather tame story, or with the somewhat soft landing of the ending. But for me the book was a wonderful read. If you have a possible interest it might be a good idea to check out some of his short stories to see if they might provide an impetus to read this novel (or his final novel Falconer, thought by some to be his best.) Stories worth seeking out include "The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Five-Forty-Eight", "The Country Husband", and "The Swimmer". For myself, I’ll be looking for more by Cheever. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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