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John Cheever |
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In his later years, Cheever's writing took frequent turns into the realm of the fantastic ("The Swimmer" is a notable example), but since most of his work is located in the dominant realist tradition of American fiction, critics have by and large approached him in that context. One writer with whom Cheever would seem to have particular affinities is F. Scott Fitzgerald, a connection implicitly acknowledged by Cheever himself in his choosing to write a brief biographical essay about Fitzgerald for a 1971 anthology. The parallels between the two novelists are developed in some detail in the closing pages of Scott Donaldson's biography of Cheever.
FORMALIST analysis of Cheever's fiction has tended to predominate, with critics offering detailed discussion of characterization, plot, and structure in his stories and novels as vehicles of thematic communication, an approach that has also involved a good deal of PSYCHOLOGICAL analysis of his work. Since Cheever is widely regarded as the premier chronicler of the lifestyle of a particular social class in a particular time and place, his work has also been subject to SOCIOLOGICAL and HISTORICAL treatment. The religious, specifically Christian element in his work has attracted MYTHOLOGICAL analysis (George W. Hunt, author of a full-length study of Cheever's fiction, is a Jesuit priest). And a great many of his stories, including "The Five-Forty-Eight," could be profitably explored through a GENDER analysis of Cheever's treatment of the complex, often tortured relationships between men and women.
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