"Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor" (December 24, 1949)
"The Season of Divorce" (March 4, 1950)
"The Pot of Gold" (October 14, 1950)
"Clancy in the Tower of Babel" (March 24, 1951)
"Goodbye, My Brother" (August 25, 1951)
"The Children" (March 6, 1952)
"The Superintendent" (March 29, 1952)
"The Cure" (July 3, 1952)
Publication history
Cheever, in an effort to see a selection of his stories published in the 1940s with The New Yorker collected in a volume, approached Random House's Robert Linscott: Cheever had been under contract with the publisher to deliver a novel since 1946. Linscott demurred, and Cheever arranged to have fourteen stories printed by Funk and Wagnalls, a publisher of encyclopedias.[5][6]
Reception
Literary critic James Kelly of The New York Times Book Review, praised Cheever's "miraculous expressions" in describing the denizens of the petty-bourgeois New England suburbs, a genre of which Kelly identifies the author as a literary master.[7] William Peden of The Saturday Evening Post, though ranking Cheever among "the most undervalued American short story writers", regarded The Enormous Radio and Other Stories as inferior to author J. D. Salinger's short fiction collection Nine Stories (1953), as did critic Alfred Mizener in The New Republic.[8] Blake Bailey reports "...a mostly favorable reception for The Enormous Radio", adding that it "sold a few copies and vanished.",[9] while Patrick Meanor notes that the collection "met with very mixed reviews."[10]
Critical assessment
The stories in The Enormous Radio were clearly an advance over the short fiction issued in Cheever's first collection The Way Some People Live (1943). Biographer Lynne Waldeland writes:
The very fact that the second volume contains only fourteen stories...indicates that the later stories have more fully developed narratives. With few exceptions, the stories in this collection are more complex in technique [and] have a greater range of subject matter and setting.[11]
Biographer Patrick Meanor traces the "dramatic growth" in Cheever's handling of narrative and themes evident in The Enormous Radio and Other Stories to the author's extensive "journal-keeping", much it written while Cheever was in his thirties.[12] Meanor declares that these self-reflective writings "directly influenced" the development of Cheever's fiction:
By the late 1940s, there is evidence that his journals allowed him to exercise his emotional and spiritual faculties more confidently. As a result...the stories in The Enormous Room are longer, more reflective, and psychologically more probing and complex than in his earlier naturalistic stories…His often painful and guilt-laden journals, which show his penchant for self-laceration, ironically worked to refine, deepen, and expand his prose style into one of the most lyrically elegant voices in modern American literature.[13]
"By the time of his second collection, The Enormous Radio and Other Stories, Cheever had laid the groundwork for a repertoire of characters, conflicts, and the themes that recur so regularly that they evolve into a world of their own. The term Cheeveresque is common in critical vocabulary because his world is instantly recognizable." — Biographer Patrick Meanor in John Cheever Revisited (1994)[14]
Meanor notes that a number of stories included in The Enormous Room and Other Stories, among them "Goodbye, My Brother"; "Torch Song" and "The Enormous Radio", would alone have "secured Cheever a permanent place in the pantheon of American short story writers."[15]
Lynne Waldeland cites the same three stories, offering them as evidence for Cheever's emergence as a modern innovator in short fiction.[16]
Footnotes
↑ Bailey, 2009 (2) p. 194: Cheever selected “fourteen strong stories” for the volume.
↑ Meanor, 1995 p. 57: Minor ellipsis applied for brevity, clarity.
↑ Meanor, 1995 p. 29: inserted hidden ellipsis for brevity, clarity. Elliped material deals with Cheever's "mythopoesis" which “only the greatest writers attain..."
O'Hara, James E. 1989. John Cheever: A Study of the Short Fiction.Twayne Publishers, Boston Massachusetts. Twayne Studies in Short Fiction no 9. ISBN0-8057-8310-5
"The Swimmer" is a short story by American author John Cheever. It was originally published in The New Yorker on July 18, 1964, and later in the short-fiction collections The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964) and The Stories of John Cheever (1978). Considered one of the author's most outstanding works, "The Swimmer" has received exhaustive analysis from critics and biographers.
The Five-Forty-Eight is a short story written by John Cheever that was originally published in the April 10, 1954, issue of The New Yorker and later collected in The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories (1958) and The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
"The Enormous Radio" is a short story by American author John Cheever. It first appeared in the May 17, 1947, issue of The New Yorker, and was subsequently collected in The Enormous Radio and Other Stories., 55 Short Stories from the New Yorker, and The Stories of John Cheever.
The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by John Cheever. Composed of eight short stories, the volume was first published by Harper & Bros. in 1958. Reissued by Hillman/MacFadden in 1961, the works are included in The Stories of John Cheever (1978). The works were originally published individually in The New Yorker.
"The Hartleys" is a work of short fiction by John Cheever, first published in The New Yorker on January 22, 1949. The story was included in The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953), and in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
The Way Some People Live is a collection of 30 works of short fiction by John Cheever, published in 1943 by Random House.
The Brigadier and the Golf Widow is a collection of short fiction by John Cheever, published by Harper and Row in 1964. These sixteen works were first published individually in The New Yorker. The works also appears in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
"Goodbye, My Brother" is a short story by John Cheever, first published in The New Yorker, and collected in The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953). The work also appears in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
"O Youth and Beauty!" is a short story by John Cheever first published in The New Yorker on August 22, 1953. The work was included the collection of Cheever's short fiction The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories (1958) by Harper and Brothers. The story is also included in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
Some People, Places and Things That Will Not Appear In My Next Novel is a collection of short fiction by John Cheever, published by Harper and Bros. in 1961. These nine short stories first appeared individually in The New Yorker or Esquire magazines. These works are included in the collection The Stories of John Cheever (1978), published by Alfred A. Knopf.
The World of Apples is the sixth collection of short fiction by author John Cheever, published in 1973 by Alfred A. Knopf. The ten stories originally appeared individually in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post or Playboy.
"Torch Song" is a short story by John Cheever which first appeared in The New Yorker on October 4, 1947. The work was included in the short fiction collection The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953), published by Funk and Wagnalls. "Torch Song" is included in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
"The Country Husband" is a short story by John Cheever which first appeared in The New Yorker on November 20, 1954. The work was included in the collection of Cheever's short fiction The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories (1958) published by Harper and Brothers. The story also appears in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
"The Music Teacher" is a short story by John Cheever which first appeared in The New Yorker on November 21, 1959. The work was included in the short fiction collection The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964), published by Harper and Row. The story is one of Cheever's most anthologized works and is regarded as "a genuine masterpiece" of short fiction. "The Music Teacher" is included in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
"The Seaside Houses" is a short story by John Cheever which first appeared in The New Yorker on July 29, 1961. The work was included in the short fiction collection The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964), published by Harper and Row.
"The Brothers" is a short story by John Cheever which first appeared in The Yale Review in June 1937. The work was included in the short fiction collection The Way Some People Live (1943), published by Random House.
"Publick House" is a short story by John Cheever which first appeared in The New Yorker on August 16, 1941. The work was included in the short fiction collection The Way Some People Live (1943), published by Random House.
"Expelled" is a short story by John Cheever published by The New Republic in 1930. The story appears in a collection of Cheever's short fiction, Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever, published in 1994 by Academy Chicago Publishers
"The World of Apples" is a work of short fiction by John Cheever, first appearing in Esquire, December 1966. The story was collected in the volume The World of Apples (1973), published by Alfred A. Knopf.
"Artemis, the Honest Well-Digger" is a work of short fiction by John Cheever, first appearing in Playboy magazine, January 1972. The story was collected in The World of Apples (1973), published by Alfred A. Knopf.
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