Glad Tidings: A Friendship in Letters: The Correspondence of John Cheever and John D. Weaver, 1945-1982

Weaver, a writer of fiction and non-fiction, first met Cheever (already an established short story writer) in 1943 in New York City at the old Paramount Studio in Astoria, Queens, where both were assigned to write training films for the Army Signal Corps. After Weaver's move to the West Coast, the two met infrequently, but continued to correspond; by the time Cheever died at the age of 70 in 1982, Weaver had received 234 letters from him, which form the bulk of this epistolary collection. Arranged by decade, the letters deal mostly with the minutiae of Cheever's domestic life and the stresses and successes of the two men's writing careers, such as Cheever's witty letter describing the 1958 National Book Awards ceremony, at which his novel, The Wapshot Chronicle , was honored. Although Cheever's letters invariably strike a light tone, they do shed light on his descent into alcoholism and on the love affairs he hid from his wife. Of primary interest to Cheever devotees. (Sept.)