Gale Cengage pinpoints Cheever’s “Speciality is the American
male’s confusion of identity and loss of social equilibrium” he write
characters who are struggling with themselves and struggle with the world
around them for example Neddy in The
Swimmer, who appears unable to come to terms with his social decline.
Hanif Kureishi describes Cheever as a “never content with
himself”, “a loner who loved both men and women …made his crazy…since it was
convention for a young man to make a choice”. It seems to me that the characters
and writer seem to share a few qualities, but the question is does this
distract from the narrative itself.
As an ignorant of Cheever until starting this module, I
began reading some of his stories and was caught up in the honesty and truth of
them. This I believe comes from Cheever projecting his own feelings onto his
characters, something I think is unavoidable for a writer anyway. But by
Cheever having his own internal struggle he creates a real struggle for the
character which give them authenticity.
The weakness and flaws of Cheever are the reason his writing
is so successful because they are the weakness of so many people then and now
to different degrees that they become timeless and relatable. So I think the
intimate relationship Cheever has with his character only heightens the effect
of the stories.
Arrange and compose, Your audience is waiting…
I found this interesting, as your making the point that for a narrative to be captivating to the reader it needs to be real and therefore the writer themselves needs to have had suffered in some way or another. This is a really good point and one which is often true for many great writers. Only thing I would do with this post is check through it as there are a couple of grammar mistakes I picked up on.
ReplyDeleteYou make some really good points in this, I agree that it is unavoidable for the writer not to project their qualities onto characters. I particularly agree with your final paragraph and your point is put across rather well in this bit - a good summary.
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