Susan Cheever’s ‘When All the Men Wore Hats’ is a moving portrait of her famous father and sequel (sort of) to her memoir ‘Home Before Dark’ (1984). She has written several non-fiction books and novels, and teaches MFA programs at Bennington College. Her new book “Hat,” is an intimate account of the her complicated relationship with her father and his body of work. Her perspective, 40 years on, is admiring, objective and just as often critical in stories and characters that reflected (or revealed) her father’s complex, emotionally distant relationships with his family.
In 1978, “The Stories of John Cheever” won both the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and was at the top of the NYT’s bestseller list for months. His collection of 68 stories (among 200), going back over 50 years, including ‘Expelled’ penned in 1930 when he had just been kicked out of Thayer Academy for his sarcastic attitude and not doing assignments.
Meanwhile, Cheever sent his story to Malcolm Crowley, then a rookie editor at The New Republic who knew a literary talent when he read one. Cheever’s debut in print prompted Thayer to want him back, and he returned, only to be re-expelled, but otherwise Cheever launched his writing career, barely eking out a living for his family in the early years, even though his work was appearing in The New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post, Harpers, and Playboy, just to name a few.
Cheever’s imagery, characters and plots exhibited his mastery of the short story form. From scenarios of New Yorkers living edgy lives in metropolis, and later moved to the suburbs (like the Cheever family) with characters lost in the ‘American dream’ post WWII mythology, the lost paradise plots inspired the literary landscape ‘Cheever country.’ In ‘Hats’ his daughter writes “He lived in two world all the time-at least. In talking about his work he often seemed to long to be more Edgar Allan Poe and less Chekhov.”
By the 60s, he was having more success with novels ( “The Wapshot Chronicle(s)” and “Bullet Park”)” but personally his life was unraveling. Two years before his biggest success he was not only on the literary skids, but he was also mentally and physically breaking down because of his drinking.
He ended up in rehab, hated it, left, went back and successfully stopped drinking. At first dealing with the rehab’s AA program with contempt, mainly because of its religious guidance, but finally embracing its methods to control his addiction. Then, in the 70s, literary editor and writer Robert Gottlieb had to convince Cheever to put out a book of his stories, and rescue them from old magazine obscurity in old magazines.
She recounts her father’s denial of any resemblance to his family members, events or dynamics was purely incidental. In her chapter ‘The Little Girl Stories’ Cheever explains that her persona turns up in his stories under various names, looking, sounding or doing things that Susan wore, said or did, “his subjects and family, were first exploited and then caught up in a process that he often reminded us was greater and more noble than our hurt feelings.”
As Cheever attests, she wasn’t buying his denials then or now. But, she writes “He laughed at my silly way of insisting he was writing about me, that any similarities between that little girl in “The New Yorker” magazine and the little girl he actually lived with were entirely coincidental.
She idolizes her father for his many gifts, personal and writing wise, but also doesn’t blink at revealing his many admitted mistakes, flaws and personal demons. At the center of some of this, is the fact that Cheever was bisexual, with flings and serious affairs with both men and women.
Cheever’s story collection topped the “New York Times” bestseller list for months and had just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He had also just published “Falconer,” written after Cheever got sober– set in a prison, it had a gay protagonist’s story-line. Susan was doing an interview piece to accompany coverage of the book in “Newsweek,” and asked her father if he was gay. He told her that “I’ve had many homosexual experiences…all between the ages of 9 and 12.”
Susan Cheever officially found out the truth about her father after recovering his hidden private journals after his death, filled with diary accounts of his affairs and sexual encounters with men, writing “My father’s sexuality was one of the central facts of my parents’ marriage… more powerful because it was hidden.” She notes “ My father lived often in darkness. Although his prose is filled with light, his story makes me sad…if he had been born now, his life could have been completely different.”
In “Hats,” she describes finding out about her father–“What I found out in those dusty minutes kneeling on the floor of the storage room changed many things in my life…” after disclosing that “My father had been hungrily, passionately, furiously gay…” adding “ a man adored for his glorious writing, was not the man I thought he was. Not at all. It turned out that other people already knew this secrets. Not my husband, who was horrified, of course, but my brother Ben had guessed. My brother Fred said he suspected and wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t sure how to tell my mother, but of course she somehow already knew.”
The six stories by her father that are included in this volume are truly among her father’s best and now can be appreciated on a different level of understanding vis-à-vis Susan Cheever’s admiration of her father’s singular aesthetic, and its complicated personal relationship with his family. She doesn’t hold back on her praise or side-step the negative aspects of his character that were ignited by his secret life, both sides are told with emotional truth and a daughter’s eternal forgiveness.
