I am at the moment (well, not precisely *this* moment - at this moment I'm composing a posting to lit-ideas) revelling in _The Stories of John Cheever_ (1st Vintage International edition, 2000). This morning I was struck by the passage:
"There are some Americans who, although their fathers emigrated from the Old West three centuries ago, never seem to have quite completed the voyage and I am one of these. I stand, figuratively, with one wet foot on Plymouth Rock, looking with some delicacy, not into a formidable and challenging wilderness but onto a half-finished civilization embracing glass towers, oil derricks, suburban continents, and abandoned movie-houses and wondering why, in this most prosperous, equitable, and accomplished world--where even the cleaning women practice the Chopin preludes in their spare time--everyone should seem to be disappointed." (from "The Death of Justina")
I am not an American. I am wondering whether there are list members who would identify with the passage quoted above. Or, if not, how their 'Auseinandersetzung' ('dialogue and debate' will do as a translation here) with the passage would run.
Is the passage 'dated'? Has the horrible destruction of those two 'glass towers' - and the aftermath of that destruction - irrevocably changed things such that no-one would identify with this (I am guessing) mid-20th-century outlook? Do cleaning women still practice the Chopin preludes? (Did they ever?) And what of the 'financial crisis' and its aftermath. Does everyone 'seem disappointed'? Have aforementioned events (and aftermaths) changed things so much that Cheever's 'vision' no longer holds? Is the civilization 'finished' (in any sense of that word)?
I'd like, if I may, to post other passages from these remarkable stories from time to time. I hope some will feel impelled to answer (however obliquely) or otherwise comment on my queries.
Chris Bruce, going back to read among the roses and the lilies (that sounds more 'Thurber' than 'Cheever' - now I'm wondering whether Cheever's Americans are some of Thurber's 'mythical beasts') in, Kiel, Germany -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
