Book Report - Fall River and Other Uncollected Stories by John Cheever

I must admit, I picked this book up solely because it had one of my favorite paintings on the cover, Automat by Edward Hopper. It is an interesting choice to represent a collection of short stories largely written during the Depression, as it was painted in the late 1920s, an era of grand and sweeping dreams far removed from the destitution of 1930's America. As a scene taken from the tail end of the gilded era, however, it strikes me as a perfect choice to bring us into the world Cheever writes of. The lone subject of Automat sits in an automated diner in New York City under rows of overly bright lights staring into her cup of coffee. She is well dressed and pretty; she could be the embodiment of the New York of Fitzgerald's 1920's. The scene gives the impression of being late into the night. A lone empty chair sits across from her. The last moments of a night in the last years of an age unrivaled in self-celebration for more than five decades. Contrary to our general impressions of the Jazz Age, there is no celebration here. Her coat remains on and pulled close. The overwhelming theme is one of absence and loneliness. Her attire, makeup, and the sheen of the diner contrast markedly with the pitch black of the city outside. Hopper's works nearly always provoke a sense of something infinitely important missing, yet in some way this missing piece always finds its way back to the viewer in the humanity of the work itself. Artistic analysis notwithstanding, the nameless subject of Automat presents the perfect foreshadowing of the stories to follow. Beginning with Fall River, published in 1931, this collection of thirteen stories is largely one of broken dreams, squandered wealth, long shots, and compromise. Here too, the empty spaces that comprise the lives of Cheever's characters are filled in by the author's ability to place us into their lives without invoking either harsh judgement or pity.

The 1930's of Cheever's short stories dovetail almost effortlessly with the travails of the early 21st century. An era of financial recklessness and wide-eyed optimism violently submerged into the cold reality of worthless investments, vanishing jobs, and difficult social change. In the 1920's & 1930's, is was the transition to the Machine Age; skilled labor was being replaced by mindless factory work. "Methods of business had changed, faster than I could change," comments the narrator in The Autobiography of a Drummer, the story of the slow decline of a late 1920's shoe salesman. "The world that I know how to walk and talk and earn a living in, has gone." Not only was the economy contracting, but productivity gains were ruthlessly efficient in shrinking the overall number of people needed. In the early 21st century, we see technology ushering in a very similar era. Not only is the economy weak and overextended, but companies find that routine tasks can be handled electronically or even sent off to cheap labor across the world. Jobs that once felt safe and paid a decent wage for showing up simply disappear never to return. The associated social unease is palpable. Americans are used to an increasing standard of living and big dreams. Giving ground is disconcerting to say the least.

Nearly every story in the book overlaps with the challenges facing modern Americans in one way or another. In Passing tells the wrenching story of a man returning to his childhood home, which has been foreclosed on and lies waiting to be replaced by a gas station, a story that could be told across the country in modern times (with less gas stations of course). A number of stories center around the racetrack at Saratoga and the obsession with a turn of fortune just around the corner and an easy way out, parables echoed daily in the financial press. While it may seem a laborious task to subject oneself to stories of despair and loss, I'd suggest that if you really sit down and think about these stories, it is possible to see a part of yourself in any of his characters. Be it the gambler, the performer who refuses to accept that their time has passed, or the exasperated and recently separated lovers putting on a good face for one more dinner with the unwitting family, Cheever forces us to see things from their shoes. In doing so, he reminds us that behind every facade are the insecurities and troubles that are part and parcel of being human. Reading his Depression-era work now also gives us the perspective to see that the overwhelming fears that came with industrialization were overcome in time and followed by one of history's most dynamic centuries of innovation and increased standards of living, even in the face of a further World War. Cheever manages to engender a sense of gratitude for the simple things in life despite a collection of stories filled with despondence by filling that empty space with the humanity of his subjects, as Hopper does in so many of his contemporary paintings. It may not be the lightest read, but Cheever's Fall River and Other Uncollected Stories is worth the effort.