You Can't Do It Alone: John Cheever in the Village

John Cheever lived at 61 Jane Street when The New Republic published his first short story. His birthday is May 27.

Here are some words from the writer:

Art is the triumph over chaos.

The Stories of John Cheever

I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss — you can't do it alone.

Christian Science Monitor (October 24, 1979)

He was a tall man with an astonishing and somehow elegant curvature of the spine, formed by an enlarged lower abdomen, which he carried in a stately and contented way, as if it contained money and securities.

Description of a Yankee rector in The Wapshot Scandal

See also: Robert Armitage's "Cheever Country," John Cheever collection of papers, 1942-1982.