June 2007

I’ve been making my way slowly through The Stories of John Cheever. I read the book once before, maybe twenty years ago, before I had ever tried writing a story myself; and also at a time when I wasn’t terribly interested in disappointment or sorrow or despair. I breezed through the stories, read all eight hundred something pages, and then went my merry way, virtually untouched. 

It’s a different state of affairs now. To begin with, I have struggled mightily with the strange business of putting down words on a page and trying to make them form a world, and, because of this, I can appreciate the complexity and artistry of Cheever’s seemingly simple stories. Also, now, I have encountered my own disappointment, sorrow, despair; and so the heartbreak at the core of all Cheever’s stories is oddly comforting to me. 

There are moments that literally make me catch my breath. This, for instance, from a story called “The Children.”

“The saffron walls of the house continued straight down into the blue water, and all the doors and windows were shut. Now she was opening them. It was at the beginning of summer. She was opening doors and windows, and, leaning into the light from one of the highest, she saw a single sail, disappearing in the direction of Africa, carrying the wicked King away.”

Or, the last sentence of “The Country Husband,” a story about suburbia and mid-life angst and love: “Then it is dark; it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains.”

Those words make my heart ache because of the sweetness of this life and its despair; and because I want to tell stories where, without explanation or fanfare, mountains appear in suburbia and on those mountains are elephants and the elephants are bearing kings—clothed in gold—on their backs.  I want to write words that push hard against the darkness of the world.  

And so I sit down each morning and try to tell a story. 

It is the beginning of summer, and I am opening doors and windows. 

I’m hoping to see the wicked King being carried away

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