The Wapshot Scandal – John Cheever

My Cheever obsession is developing apace, a temporary relaxation of Waterstone’s policy to stop me buying books saw a cashing in of loyalty points (bitching aside I’m a very loyal customer) in return for the acquisition of John Cheever’s ‘Collected Stories’, Maria Edgeworth’s ‘Helen’, and ‘The Count of Monte Christo’. The Count alone is well over a thousand pages and I’m now idly wondering how many words I got per pence, because Cheever’s ‘Collected Stories’ is a hefty old tome as well.

I’ve had ‘The Wapshot Scandal’ for a few months and have been sitting on it with unusual self restraint; normally I’d just plough through everything I could find by an author who appealed to me as much as Cheever did after ‘The Wapshot Chronicles’, but this way seems to work too, not least because ‘Scandal’ is a very different book.

Where ‘The Wapshot Chronicle’ is a mix of coming of age drama and paean to small town life in New England, ‘The Wapshot Scandal’ is a proper cold war novel (of which I’ve read surprisingly few – surprising to me anyway given that I grew up at the very end of the cold war period). Many of the same characters come back but life has moved on and not necessarily been very kind in the meantime. Even St Botolphs (the small town in question) shows signs of change and a fragmenting community. The whole tone is darker – within the chapter a Christmas eve scene of snow and carol singers starts to take in loneliness, alcoholism, and finally the death of an old man as he pitches into the freezing river whilst drowning a sack of unwanted kittens.

Decay and corruption - both moral and physical, are a constant thread throughout the book yet when it ends on another Christmas scene there’s a silver lining of sorts around the more general black clouds. Cheever is better known (apparently) for his short stories (I wish he was better known generally here because any way I look at it the writing is remarkable.) and in some ways ‘Scandal’ does read like a collection of short stories. The narrative is divided between different characters loosely connected by family and sex, each episode is an almost complete story in itself, somehow though it becomes a complete book, perfectly balanced and far more than the sum of its parts.

Despite, or more probably because of the overall bleakness I found more humour in ‘Scandal’ than in ‘Chronicle’, and more to empathise with as well. There are no certainties, this is the era of McCarthy after all, not to mention heavy drinking, twitching curtains, and rigid social mores. ‘Scandal’ is not as racy as ‘Peyton Place’, or as chilling as ‘The Lottery’, although both those books reflect some of what’s to be found here; a world of flawed but human characters who I find myself caring about far more than I would have supposed possible, and writing so dazzling I can’t begin to understand how it’s put together – which feels like a sure sign of genius.

And on a totally unrelated topic – I won’t draw for ‘Rhubarbaria’ until the weekend so please do put your name down if you think you might like that spare copy!

A vintage moment

I have a day in London tomorrow; work sponsored no less (I’m en route to training on Wednesday). I’m pretty chuffed about it as it’s rare to find myself alone in London and with time to make whatever plans I like so I’m going to make the most of it, which will inevitably involve some book shopping, but for a change I have a few other places I want to explore – foody sightseeing and a hunt for cake decorating accessories (very inspired by ‘Bake and Decorate’). I’m also very excited at the prospect of meeting a book group friend for the first time – jobs really aren’t all bad after all.

The book wish list at the moment seems to be sponsored by Vintage; I don’t have A.S Byatt’s ‘The Children’s Book’ yet, I’ve been meaning to get Isherwood’s ‘A Single Man’ for months and most of all I’ve just discovered John Cheever and want more. I came across John Cheever when I was browsing Waterstone’s for John O’Hara, they had no O’Hara but the red backed books started to jump out (visually not actually) at me and I ended up intrigued by a Cheever. Further browsing on amazon increased my interest and since then I’ve acquired and read ‘The Wapshot Chronicle’.

Male American writers, even from the fifties, are normally right on the edge of my comfort zone but so far Vintage have come up trumps for me every time. I think I was sold on ‘The Wapshot Chronicle’ from the first line of blurb “Meet the Wapshots of St Botolphs. There is Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea-dog and would be suicide...” but if that hadn’t done it I really fell in love on page 11 with this description

“The attic was a fitting place for these papers, for this barny summit of the house – as big as a hayloft – with its trunks and oars and tillers and torn sails and broken furniture and crooked chimneys and hornets and wasps and obsolete lamps spread out at one’s feet like the ruins of a vanished civilisation and with an extraordinary spiciness in the air as if some eighteenth century Wapshot, drinking Madeira and eating nuts on a sunny beach and thinking about the passing of the season, had tried to capture the heat and light in a flask or hamper and had released his treasure in the attic...”

What Cheever does which feels new to me, and I suspect that this is a fundamental difference between the sort of women writers I read and male writers generally, is describe the world around his characters. I’m used to reading about what women think and see, but here I’m reading about what men feel, and physically feel. How things smell, the way that sand crunches underfoot, or grass feels against skin, the taste of a storm in the air – it’s all on the page and every time it’s something I recognise it takes me there. Plot wise it’s a family chronicle along suitably eccentric and gothic New England lines – I was strongly reminded of Shirley Jackson’s ‘We Have Always Lived In The Castle’ in places, but it’s not so much about what happens as the people it happens to and the way they experience the world.

It’s a great feeling to know I’m one book in to Cheever with plenty more to come as well as journals and letters. I’m also particularly pleased to have started with his first book – I rarely manage to do that and it’s pure serendipity this time. If I’m organised (big if) I can follow how his writing develops, which as he won a Pulitzer for it should be a project worth following.

For a first novel it’s a really remarkable bit of writing. Partly based on his own youth in New England, which also inspires me to find out more about Cheever, it’s just so wonderfully rich; characters who should be ridiculous are made real by detail and affection, every landscape and room as real to me as anything as I can remember. The whole affect is almost intoxicating; so perfectly tempered with a sense of loneliness pathos and loss that any danger of nostalgic self indulgence or over indulgence in eccentricity is well and truly avoided. Really good stuff.