Tag Archives: blake bailey

I Am John Cheever

I don’t have his body of work, but I have much of his character. I’m reading Blake Bailey’s biography. On page 620, I learn that at Yaddo at age 68, Cheever kept making fun of this surgeon-writer Richard Selzer who … Continue reading

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Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey

I’m loving this 2009 biography. I love the insights into body use in this quote from Cheever: “In an upper-class gathering I suddenly think of myself as a pariah—a small and dirty fraud, a deserved outcast, a spiritual and sexual … Continue reading

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I’m Not As Bad As Richard Yates

Over Shabbos, I finished Blake Bailey’s superb biography of novelist Richard Yates. I love reading biographies of great writers because I usually find that they share my flaws and yet have done great things. It gives me hope. Yates had … Continue reading

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