The Wapshot Chronicle, by John Cheever

John Cheever’s debut 1957 novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, is urbane and polished in style, somewhat reminiscent of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Cheever mixes intense autobiography with a highly stylised prose to create an overripe hothouse effect. The Wapshot Chronicle is brilliant and mesmerising, but its author’s overwhelming, obsessive consciousness saps the novel of any possible natural feeling and emotion. Candid personal disclosure is hard to decipher from imaginative flight of fancy.

John Cheever (1912–1982) made a name for himself as a short story writer during the 1940s and early 1950s, before publishing his first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle in 1957. It won the National Book award the following year, and was followed by a sequel, The Wapshot Scandal, in 1964.

Cheever writes in a sleek, quicksilver like prose that is almost mannered, but is saved by its wit, poetic observation and lush psychological interiors. It has been noted by some critics that Cheever is an American Chekov, and this may be true (I’ve not read Chekov), but the writer he most reminded me of was Proust. The Wapshot Chronicle reads very much like a remembrance of youth past, rich in recalled detail, brought back to life via a highly cultured imagination. Cheever dazzles and amazes with his virtuosity, but one wonders how reliable he is as a memoirist of his own past and psyche.

There is not much of a plot in The Wapshot Chronicle, with most of the story concentrating on a New England family who live by the sea. There are the two sons, Moses and Coverly, the masculine yet somewhat flamboyant father Leander and the eccentric mother Mrs Wapshot. Like the fiction of that other chronicler of affluent middle suburban America, Richard Yates, the Wapshots have their fair share of middle class problems, and aren’t particularly grateful for all that the American economy has given them. Oscar Wilde said dissatisfaction was the first step on the road to greatness, and much American writing from this period has such unhappiness in spades.

The Wapshot Chronicle is urbane and sophisticated, full of beautiful, eccentric and unhappy people, but the reader can at times feel overwhelmed by this heady and potent mix. Sometimes you wish for a window to be opened and fresh air let in.

The Wapshot Chronicle, by John Cheever. Published by Vintage Classics. ISBN: 9780099275275