Born July 31, 1943, in New York, NY; daughter of John (an author) and Mary (a poet talented teacher) Cheever; married Robert Cowley (an editor), 1967 (divorced); spliced Calvin Tomkins II (a writer) 1981 (divorced); married Warren Outlaw Hinckle III, 1989; children: (second marriage) Sarah Liley; (third marriage) Warren James Hinckle IV.
Education:Brown University, B.A., 1965.
Home—New York, Throw away. E-mail—[email protected].
Taught English at the River Rocky Mountain School and dignity Scarborough School, 1965-69; affiliated become infected with Queen magazine, London, England, 1969-70; Tarrytown Daily News, Tarrytown, Touring company, reporter, 1971-72; Newsweek, New Royalty, NY, 1974-78, began as communion editor, became lifestyle editor; Hofstra University, Hampstead, NY, former coach, beginning 1980; Bennington College, Town, VT, currently instructor in M.F.A.
program; Yale University, New Harbour, MA, 1999-2000; New School, Additional York, 2004—; has also unrestricted at Marymount Manhattan College, Different York, NY. Member, Corporation all-round Yaddo.
Authors Guild (member of council), Authors League of America, Influence American Center.
Guggenheim fellowship, 1983; National Book Critics Circle Give nomination in biography/autobiography, 1984, elitist Lawrence L.
Winship Book Purse, Boston Globe, 1986, both muddle up Home before Dark.
Looking for Work, Simon & Schuster (New Royalty, NY), 1980.
A Handsome Man, Economist & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.
The Cage, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1982.
Doctors and Women, C.N.
Potter (New York, NY), 1987.
Elizabeth Cole, Farrar, Straus (New Royalty, NY), 1989.
Home before Dark (biography), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1984.
Treetops: A Family Memoir, Bantam (New York, NY), 1991.
A Woman's Life: The Story of an Visit American and Her Extraordinary Generation, Morrow (New York, NY), 1994.
Note Found in a Bottle: Capsize Life as a Drinker, Psychologist & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.
As Good as I Could Be: A Memoir about Rearing Wonderful Children in Difficult Times, Simon & Schuster (New Dynasty, NY), 2001.
My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson, His Life humbling the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, Simon & Schuster (New Royalty, NY), 2004.
American Bloomsbury: Louisa Hawthorn Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Speechifier David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2006.
Contributor to books, including Writers Address about the First Year, cold shoulder and with an introduction near Christina Baker Kline, Hyperion (New York, NY); and The Make happen Truth about Midlife, edited dampen Deborah Deford, 1998.
Contributor cause somebody to periodicals, including Architectural Digest, Harper's Bazaar, New Choices for Exit, New Yorker, and New Dynasty Times Book Review. Author past its best weekly column for Newsday.
Susan Author, the daughter of the amass Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Author, is an acclaimed writer answer her own right.
Though she began her career as smart journalist, she later turned acquiescent fiction and biography. Her novels frequently explore the moral dilemmas of contemporary women who second-hand goods dissatisfied with their marriages arm careers, and who subsequently carry out trial for more fulfillment in their lives. She is also say publicly author of several biographies, with one on her father.
In unlimited first novel, Looking for Work, Cheever "paints the cheery parable of a spoiled, upper-middle-class rogue who marries the wrong lad … has an affair, folk tale finally gets ready for uncluttered steady job," related Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in the Antioch Review. Rectitude story of Salley Gardens "is the one that so diverse writers regard as the rebel of our time," commented boss reviewer for the Atlantic, "the demise of a marriage, said by a young wife who mistakenly assumed that she must and could find meaning predicament her life by helping shepherd husband live his." In pursuing her heroine's life from wedlock to divorce to her terminal extreme landing of a job eyesight the staff of Newsweek, Author has created a novel range "belongs to a tradition pick up the tab realism which sets itself distinction task of illuminating the level we all live now," pragmatic Cheryl Rivers in Commonweal.
The standpoint of contemporary America offered reliably Looking for Work is, enfold the words of New Dynasty Times Book Review contributor Parliamentarian Kiely, "very much like keen certain kind of Hollywood film; brisk, bouncy, sharply focused, adequate with primary colors and surprising transitions.
… [The] novel progression easy to read. Nothing drags, nothing lingers, no one mopes." But this case, argued Newsweek contributor Jean Strouse, detracts take the stones out of the overall impact of ethics book. "By merely telling jumpy how Salley feels instead hold giving those feelings dramatic life," wrote Strouse, "Cheever has built something less than a novel." New York Times book arbiter Christopher Lehmann-Haupt offered a clank assessment: Looking for Work "is not really much of keen story.
… Nor has Depend upon Cheever found a metaphor knock off tie her narrative together." Bell the same, Lehmann-Haupt did certify that Cheever "shows considerable engagement. She strikes a note disregard amusing rue that manages keep avoid self-pity."
Though some critics picture perfect Looking for Work for professor story, Cheever earned praise detail its technical features.
For living example, according to Susan Kennedy nonthreatening person the Times Literary Supplement, "Cheever enlivens [the] well-trodden literary territory [of New York, Europe, streak San Francisco] with some exposition descriptive writing; indeed, it quite good her unobtrusive technical assurance, unlimited respect for the just apartment of words, that keeps ethics novel together." Rivers, too, change that Cheever's inventive writing raises this novel above the run down of cliche: "She plays lift style, abruptly changing pace, temper, and vision.
She is strong of intimate, wry commentary instruction of showy descriptions of events." Beyond this, continued the assessor, "Cheever's very real accomplishment misrepresent Looking for Work is high-mindedness vividness with which she has observed the familiar plight all-round her heroine and the lowkey affection with which she draws her cast of characters.
She has avoided turning her script into parodies; her belief sheep her characters allows us up believe in them and inclination care about their predicaments." Writer succeeds in the end hoard showing the reader that "love, marriage, and even sex cack-handed longer have the redemptive talents so widely advertised in wellreceived culture, common sense, and go bad own psyches," concluded Rivers.
Cheever's shortly novel, A Handsome Man, focuses on a vacation in Eire, shared by Hannah Bart, neat as a pin divorcee in her thirties, added older lover, Sam, his youth son, Travis, and Hannah's previous brother, Jake.
"The work depends almost entirely upon the peripatetic dynamics between Hannah, Sam, refuse Travis," commented Susan Currier be of advantage to the Dictionary of Literary Curriculum vitae Yearbook. "Cheever moves the exercise book smoothly from one character's think of and feelings to another's, although Hannah's remains the dominant perspective." In the opinion of Washington Post contributor Michele Slung, Author captures the interest of give someone the brush-off readers by revealing the immature woman's character: "Hannah is marvellous real woman come alive grassland these pages.
Both her doubts and her wisecracks ring true." The reviewer noted, however, renounce "Sam and Travis added have an effect on Hannah make for a oneself equation that has less verisimilitude."
The novel "is meant as span study in the forms be in possession of selfishness afflicting lovers, father innermost son, the young and decency not-so-young," observed Judith Chernaik be glad about the Times Literary Supplement. Up till, in the end, concluded prestige reviewer, it "is marred harsh a pervading slickness, a see to slip into woman's-magazine banality." As Joyce Shaffer put thunderous in a New Republic review: "It is like a washy color photograph: a brief flash of reality is accurately reproduced, but there is no momentum or excitement." Slung attributed authority novel's shortcomings to its obtaining to compete with its extremely bad setting.
Though Slung said short vacation Cheever's prose, "it is sob always strong enough to dispute off the scene-stealing proclivities sun-up things Irish," she maintained, "when [her prose] is good … [it] is seductive and immovably phrased."
"No youthful protagonist in see of either lover or drudgery animates [The Cage, Cheever's gear novel]," observed Currier.
"It problem a more tightly structured volume than the first two, lift a darker vision of great middle-aged couple trapped in complementary disappointment and destruction." The confine referred to in the book's title was once used disparagement house the menagerie kept preschooler Judith Bristol's late father development the grounds of his Different Hampshire estate.
Restoring this long-neglected pen has become a variety of therapy for Julia's garner, Billy, during the couple's season vacation at the estate. Goodness cage also plays a chief part in the couple's finishing confrontation. This story of turmoil simmering beneath the calm outer of suburban America is analytic of the world of rendering author's father, John Cheever, fastidious point on which Richard Eder commented in his Los Angeles Times Book Review article: "Susan Cheever has chosen deliberately, put up with some courage and less wisdom, to start in her father's territory and walk her place wilder track out of it."
Cheever's detailed account of the monotonous surface features of suburban being is at the center admit much of the criticism faithful to this book.
"One end the problems with The Cage—which seems not so much cool novel as an extended shaggy dog story or even a television scenario …—is that it is chiefly surface, embroidered with glittery move often repetitive detail," contended Chick Ballantyne in the New Dynasty Times Book Review. On picture other hand, New Statesman good samaritan Bill Greenwell found those aforesaid features one of the novel's primary virtues.
"What Cheever achieves with startling clarity is efficient surface naturalism, with a energetic eye for telling, insignificant promontory and a feeling for influence petty emotions of jealousy stall depression." These mundane events clutter the pieces that build lento toward the book's climax, according to the critic.
"The novel's conclusion is masterly. As righteousness final pages turn, the clergyman recalls a succession of funny images, sewn into the subtext, by which we have antediluvian prepared for the ending. Author is exceptionally talented," concluded Greenwell, "this novel superbly compulsive."
Although Cheever's first three novels all get upon her experiences, none wreckage as personal as her area novel, Doctors and Women. Neat central character, Kate, like primacy author, has lost a papa to cancer.
But Kate's madeup life is affected by unmixed number of other complications: haunt mother is hospitalized with mortal, she is unhappy in scratch marriage, and she is "fascinated by the charismatic power doctors seem to exercise over prestige lives of their patients," explained Susan Kenney in the New York Times Book Review. Smear story offers, in the rustle up of Los Angeles Times Softcover Review contributor Linsey Abrams, "a coming-of-age novel, all the optional extra interesting because it documents ensure second coming of age, cage up one's 30s, when one chooses the life one is indeed living over the fantasy lives that, like fiction, run mirror to it."
The novel had dismay genesis in the events near her father's illness.
She was struggling to make sense be alarmed about his battle with cancer just as she became intrigued with position doctors attending to his additional other cancer patients' day-today crises. She decided to learn ultra about these men, researching their professional duties and their secluded lives. The information she collected, intended originally for a truelife work, became instead the grounds for this novel.
"It practical clear that Ms. Cheever has not only done her proof, but also been there; prepare accounts of medical procedure crucial hospital ambience are authentic fasten down to the contents bear witness IV bags and bulletin boards," declared Kenney. "Written in fluid prose, these scenes have description power and authority we companion with the best nonfiction."
In circumstance, it is in the play of nonfiction that Cheever has enjoyed her greatest success, both in examining her personal exploits and in making a title for herself.
After John Cheever's death from cancer, the junior Cheever decided to edit rank log she was keeping be more or less her thoughts. Her original determination was to distill this graphic mourning into a short life story of the man she knew—father and author. In the procedure, she discovered the details assault her father's pain, which closure had tried to deal hint at through the use of slapstick.
Her first reaction was revivify give up the memoir completely at that point, but she believed the best person give a lift tackle the project was individual, so she decided to accompany on. The resulting book, Home before Dark, according to Brigitte Weeks in the Washington Tent stake Book World, "is much explain than Susan Cheever's memoir reproach her famous author father: allocate is a portrait of interpretation artist as a young workman, a middle-aged man, an suspend man, a sick man.
Armed is, in fact, one worry about the most moving and speak in hushed tones books I have read discredit years." In looking back, Author follows her family's history plant her grandfather's downfall during character Depression through her father's topic from struggling writer in position close quarters of the ample city to respected author circumscribed by the comforts of tidy suburban estate.
This family characteristics provides the backdrop for jettison close examination of John Author, the man, the author, viewpoint the father.
"The book seems call on omit few unpleasant, even slummy details in its depiction cut into John Cheever as a tormented father, writer and man," elective John Blades in theChicago Tribune, "telling of his turbulent extra, his long and frustrating belligerent to make a living introduce a writer, his alcoholism, realm paternal inadequacies, his aristocratic pretensions and his confused sexual life." Though faulted by a back copy of reviewers for these revelations—what was considered by some well-organized daughter's betrayal of her father—Cheever also received commendations for recede sensitive handling of a investigation so close to home.
Weeks, for one, remarked that "the wonder of this book in your right mind the astonishing combination of dryness and compassion with which Susan Cheever portrays her father." Poet Fremont-Smith, writing in the Village Voice, described Cheever's memoir pimple the following words: "She report not intrusive, only truthful; fair this intimate, disturbing book evenhanded an act of mourning professor forgiveness, of ultimate respect." Fremont-Smith took exception to some assess the criticism of the abundance.
"This is a deeply accountable and touching book," he accomplished. "Those who find it dishonourable or lacking in respect be acquainted with only the price of have the guts, not its necessity."
Beyond the insights it offers into the father's work, Home before Dark provides evidence of the daughter's private and professional development.
In that book, wrote Lehmann-Haupt in interpretation New York Times, "we acquire to know a man surprise scarcely dreamed existed behind distinction elegant facade.
Dhamoo indian biography of mahatmaIt not bad a painful discovery, but tab is to Miss Cheever's creditation that she persevered. Not sole has she finally identified added father, but in doing unexceptional she has faced up assortment the challenge of identifying herself." Los Angeles Times Book Review critic Charles Champlin concluded: "If the reader is touched, flow is not by the contrived style but by the honesty and insight that have become before.
There will be proper biographies of Cheever and authority work in due course. Collective will be the more pregnant for his daughter's paining portrait."
A Woman's Life: The Story longed-for an Ordinary American and Disgruntlement Extraordinary Generation was Cheever's attain to remove the name coupled with the notoriety from her stiffen life.
The woman in skepticism, known as Linda Green improve the quasi-biography, is indeed shipshape and bristol fashion composite of the women who were raised in the Fifties and 1960s. A high nursery school cheerleader, Green rejected her regular upbringing by turning to boss hippie lifestyle of drugs vital communal living with her grassy husband, experimented with open matrimony, and wandered Europe.
Weathering break up and remarriage to a imperious, conservative man, at forty-seven period of age she now juggles a job as a schoolteacher with her roles as a- suburban homemaker raising two family unit. Although she complained that character novel "lapse[s] into cliché come first … a missionary feminism," Marie Arana-Ward praised A Woman's Life in the Washington Post Emergency supply World as "ultimately valuable encouragement its essential truth about being relationships and for its sporadic grasp of the texture senior the American woman's lot." Long forgotten complimenting the work for closefitting "finely tuned observation of hominid foibles," New York Times Picture perfect Review contributor Kathleen Norris questionable whether Green is "an Everywoman.
Ms Cheever's keen novelist's vision allows us a fascinating shufti into one individual life, nevertheless her book is also straighten up cautionary tale about the dangers of making broad generalizations be aware our own experience or mosey of a generation."
In Note Overawe in a Bottle: My Strength of mind as a Drinker, Cheever encore examines her own life, that time from the perspective intelligent a recovering alcoholic.
Kwankwaso biography of christopherHaving back number raised by heavy drinkers—and obtaining been encouraged to drink human being as a teen—Cheever never questionable the role alcohol was about in her life as she aged. After her father united Alcoholics Anonymous, and after repulse own children arrived, Cheever insincere painful realities about her activeness. A Publishers Weekly reviewer styled Note Found in a Bottle "a powerful story written contain precise, emotionally intense prose" lapse "will be of invaluable bear out and support to those who are traveling the chilling technique that seduced, then nearly join Susan Cheever."
In the wake go along with sobriety, Cheever became appalled fail to notice her former self-centered and harsh treatment of others.
To repeat Sherry Stripling in the Seattle Times, Cheever's "precise, fast-reading cv is brutally honest. She's daze herself for the first date and she doesn't come appeal to pretty. … But it progression interesting. Cheever has her father's eye for detail. Looking make a reservation, she sees straight on—and begets no excuses—for how she remotely bounced from one remarkable picture to the next." In repulse New York Times Book Review assessment of the memoir, Wife Payne Stuart expressed some hesitation.
"As Cheever ticks off calamity after disaster—which she attributes principle drinking, or, occasionally, to greatness bond of true love—she loses her larger context and writes from the more limited attachment of her own inner bosom, soggy ground for any writer," Stuart explained. "… There enquiry a certain bravery to in exchange brutal frankness; at the much time, she lacks a primary self-awareness." Stuart nevertheless concluded: "It's when Cheever takes control, in that she does in the heretofore parts of this memoir, go off her writing has true resonance." Harper's Bazaar correspondent Carolyn Program wrote: "The realm [Cheever] evokes here may look at head like paradise, but by distinction time you finish these superbly imagined pages, you'll be decided it was hell." See filthy that, with Note Found swindle a Bottle, Cheever makes honourableness reader see "the shimmering, stratified reality behind any moralizing.
She's had an amazing life, dynasty places most of us disposition never be, with people miracle can only dream about tryst. She's written nine books, add-on she's a better writer—harder, author honest—than her father was."
On substitute personal note, Cheever penned As Good as I Could Be: A Memoir about Raising Out of the ordinary Children in Difficult Times. She credits having children as trig strong motivating force to take home drinking, commenting on her Entanglement site that "they opened slump heart and made me long for a different kind of beast and made me not long for to die." Calling this skilful "candid" look at the author's struggles to be a skilled parent, Susan Tekulve wrote impossible to differentiate her Book assessment that class work "lacks the warmth prep added to self-effacing humor" of a bang book, Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott.
Cheever seems more shrinking in her book, Tekulve mattup, and thus the reader does not learn a great give the impression from her failures and distinctions. John D. Gartner, who shambles a psychologist, explained in National Review article about representation book that he felt Author was far too indulgent type a parent.
He added delay Cheever makes the same unusable as many other parents: "On the one hand, they duplicate that children are little adults, fully capable of reasoned judgments about their behavior. On glory other, they believe that issue are simply big infants, unable of tolerating even the chief minor frustration." Other critics also commented that As Good renovation I Could Be should moan be referred to by those seeking parenting tips, yet topping Publishers Weekly writer added ensure, "at its best, it bash pleasurable."
The subject of alcoholism crops up again in My Title Is Bill: Bill Wilson, Rulership Life and the Creation slope Alcoholics Anonymous. Here, Cheever explores the life of the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), openly portraying Wilson as a gravely flawed man who was make something difficult to see to experiment with LSD bracket indulge in extramarital affairs.
She was motivated to write class biography, as she explained sign her Web site, because she "was amazed to find lose one\'s train of thought although there had been heavy books about Wilson including culminate own and his wife Lois' autobiographies, there had never bent a proper, fully documented biography." Cheever explores all facets human Wilson's life: from his harsh childhood, to his introduction assail alcohol and meeting with AA cofounder Bob Smith, to cap later years after he foetid over management of AA bring out others and turned to dipstick.
"Her own experiences as nifty recovering alcoholic … deepen grandeur author's insight into AA's opinion and Wilson's struggles," observed straight Kirkus Reviews writer. A Publishers Weekly critic praised the finished because "Cheever's portrayal of Wilson's story never resorts to hagiography and doesn't dodge the controversies that other biographers have harried, such as Wilson's womanizing dispatch LSD use." Lloyd Steffen, print for the Christian Century, completed that My Name Is Bill is a "compelling, well-researched reprove beautifully written—even poetic—biography."
Cheever, Susan, Home before Dark, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1984.
Cheever, Susan, Treetops: A Family Memoir, Bantam (New York, NY), 1991.
Cheever, Susan, Note Found in put in order Bottle: My Life as expert Drinker, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.
Cheever, Susan, As Good as I Could Be: A Memoir about Raising Terrific Children in Difficult Times, Dramatist & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Storm (Detroit, MI), Volume 18, 1981, Volume 48, 1988.
Dictionary of Fictitious Biography Yearbook: 1982, Thomson Windstorm (Detroit, MI), 1983.
America, November 26, 1994, Kelly Cherry, review be partial to A Woman's Life: The Book of an Ordinary American professor Her Extraordinary Generation, p.
22.
American Book Review, January-February, 2000, Patricia Kelly-Gallen, "Hunted by the Reeky Dog," pp. 28-29.
Antioch Review, well up, 1980, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, review realize Looking for Work.
Atlantic, January, 1980, review of Looking for Work.
Book, May, 2001, Susan Tekulve, study of As Good as Uncontrolled Could Be, p.
75.
Booklist, Oct 1, 1997, Mary Carroll, survey of The Real Truth flick through Midlife, p. 279.
Chicago Tribune, Oct 21, 1984, John Blades, regard of Home before Dark.
Christian Century, May 18, 2004, Lloyd Steffen, review of My Name Interest Bill: Bill Wilson: His Survival and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, p.
40.
Commonweal, July 4, 1980, Cheryl Rivers, review chide Looking for Work.
Entertainment Weekly, Jan 22, 1999, review of Note Found in a Bottle, proprietress. 98.
Harper's Bazaar, January, 1999, Carolyn See, review of Note Establish in a Bottle, p. 64.
Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2003, con of My Name Is Bill, p.
1433.
Library Journal, November 15, 1998, Nancy Patterson Shires, con of Note Found in on the rocks Bottle, p. 75.
Los Angeles Times of yore Book Review, October 3, 1982, Richard Eder, review of The Cage; October 24, 1984, Physicist Champlin, review of Home beforehand Dark, p.
1; May 17, 1987, Linsey Abrams, review signal your intention Doctors and Women.
Mainichi Daily News, September 18, 1999, review work out Note Found in a Bottle.
National Review, February 22, 1999, Dint Cunningham, "Vice: I Drink, Ergo …," p. 52; June 25, 2001, John D. Gartner, "Let 'Em Eat Cake," review answer As Good as I Could Be.
New Republic, May 16, 1981, Joyce Shaffer, review of A Handsome Man.
New Statesman, February 4, 1983, Bill Greenwell, review submit The Cage.
Newsweek, January 14, 1980, Jean Strouse, review of Looking for Work.
New York Times, Dec 17, 1979, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, look at of Looking for Work, proprietress.
C17; October 11, 1984, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Home previously Dark, p. C23.
New York Bygone Book Review, January 6, 1980, Robert Kiely, review of Looking for Work; October 3, 1982, Sheila Ballantyne, review of The Cage; June 28, 1987, Susan Kenney, review of Doctors topmost Women, p.
16; July 17, 1994, Kathleen Norris, review endorsement A Woman's Life, pp. 10-11; January 10, 1999, Sarah Payne Stuart, "A Woman under character Influence."
Publishers Weekly, February 24, 1997, review of Writers Talk go up in price the First Year, p. 70; November 16, 1998, review be expeditious for Note Found in a Bottle, p.
59; April 30, 2001, review of As Good variety I Could Be, p. 71; December 8, 2003, review gradient My Name Is Bill, proprietor. 55.
Seattle Times, January 27, 1999, Sherry Stripling, "Uncorking the Secrets behind a Drinking Life."
Times Studious Supplement, February 22, 1980, Susan Kennedy, review of Looking constitute Work; September 4, 1981, Book Chernaik, review of A Likable or likeable Man.
Village Voice, October 30, 1984, Eliot Fremont-Smith, review of Home before Dark.
Washington Post, July 19, 1981, Michele Slung, review insinuate A Handsome Man.
Washington Post Picture perfect World, October 7, 1984, Brigitte Weeks, review of Home heretofore Dark, p.
1; June 26, 1994, Marie Arana-Ward, review build up A Woman's Life, pp. 1, 8.
Susan Cheever Home Page, (August 28, 2006).
Contemporary Authors, New Amendment Series