Blake Bailey, the author of the Richard Yates A Tragic Honesty who inspired a drinking game here earlier in the year, has a new John Cheever biography coming out. The Boston Globe caught up with Bailey. Thanks to a $42,000 Guggenheim fellowship, Bailey says he plans to spend the next two years explaining how Cheever arrived at his tombstone. (Bailey has until December 2007 to deliver the manuscript.) Which suggests an equally arduous and equally moribund biography of another great writer. But Bailey says that he plans to approach Cheever’s life as “a redemptive fable.” Bailey has already talked to half of his 150 sources and read all 28 volumes of Cheever’s private journals.
Another Tragic Biography?
– June 10, 2005Posted in: Yates, Richard
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.
Not the Seinfeld link Bailey is following:
Yates daughter dated Larry David – Seinfeld fans that remember the episode Jerry buys a ridiculously expensive suede jacket and he and George go out to dinner with Elaine and her crotchety, incredibly talented author father – Jerry turns the jacket inside out to have pink stripes exposed because it is pouring rain outside after dinner.
This really happened to Larry with Richard Yates.
Now Bailey does the Cheever bio – Seinfeld fans will remember the letters that were saved when Kramer burnt down Susan’s father’s cabin…love letters from Cheever to her father.
Any other literary geniuses noted in Seinfeld episodes Bailey can go after in 2008?
Enjoy,
Dan: I’m pretty sure that I mentioned Bailey’s Seinfeld angle before (and if I didn’t, I sure plum MEANT to), but you’re absolutely spot on. What’s interesting about David’s episode is that he actually ended up leaving out several details, honoring Richard Yates more than satirizing him.
You may have Ed.
I do know that Blake has asked Larry David if in fact there was a story behind why they used the Cheever letters and he didn’t have a personal one for those. He said they were just looking for a well known author who was known to have had homosexual relationships for that story line.
Enjoy,
Spot on?