The Wapshot Chronicle

I believe that every one should read this book twice: the first to get touched by the beautiful story, the characters that pop up all the book, the almost tangible Cheever's New England, etc. - the second to understand and learn how a masterpiece is created and how some books became gifts to the mankind. This is the kind of book that you get upset when it is over and you start advising your friends to read it as slow and quiet as possible. John Cheever is - no doubt - one of the great writers of the XX century, and this book shows why.

Looking over the previous customer reviews of this masterful, moving and tragicomic novel by one of this country's greatest and most melodic writers ever, I was struck by the small clique of people who claimed that the novel was "boring" or otherwise somehow unworthy of the National Book Award it had received upon publication almost half a century ago now. At first I was troubled by this; how could anyone read this and fail to experience that so-called shock of recognition, the realization that this is one of the great masterpieces in the English language. And then the answer came quite simply: Some people simply aren't capable of such recognition.Pity, for them.The Wapshot Chronicle is Cheever at his best. (And to the customer who wrote that Cheever was merely a short story writer and not a novelist...absurd! In addition to this book, Bullet Park and Falconer were both brilliant novels of the first order.) This is quite simply a work of art, rich in color and textured in Cheever's unique and brilliant prose. Cheever's obvious and famous love of the language shines through on every page, with a lilting, almost musical cadence. But what he offers that so many other great writers of prose can't is his wonderful storytelling gift. No one before or since has matched Cheever's ability to marry substantive narrative and an almost poetic meter with such mesmerizing results (although lesser writers such as Updike have built long and distinguished careers trying.)I have my well-worn copy of "Chronice" here in front of me, and I have opened two pages at random. Here is a line drawn from each page, to illustrate Cheever's soaring gift:"What a tender thing, then, is a man. How, for all his crotch-hitching and swagger, a whisper can turn his soul into a cinder. The taste of alum in the rind of a grape, the smell of the sea, the heat of the spring sun, berries bitter and sweet, a grain of sand in his teeth--all of that which he meant by life seemed taken away from him..."And:"Now Moses knew that women can take many forms; that it is in their power in the convulsions of love to take the shape of any beast or beauty on land or sea--fire, caves, the sweetness of haying weather--and to let break upon the mind, like light on water, its most brilliant imagery..."And that was just two random passages! Imagine what I'd find by digging through the book in (no pun intended) earnest in search of his best Hemingwayan "true sentence"!Boring? Well...there are no violent car chases here, no thrilling police shoot-outs, no serial killers, no massive technical military craft, no gripping courtroom dramas. So, hey, if you are "bored" by astonishing imagery, mesmerizing storytelling, marvellous and beautiful use of our language, and compelling insight into the human condition as offered by one of the most sympathetic and engaging American authors of all time, then definitely steer clear of this book; next time you're in the bookstore, just inch a little to the righ

The fictitious Wapshot family of Cheever's "The Wapshot Chronicle" are old-line New Englanders, prominent but modest citizens of St. Botolphs, Massachusetts. The central characters are Leander, the aging father, who is the captain of a boat that transports passengers between a leisure island and the mainland; his loving wife Sarah; his carefree, irresponsible sons Moses and Coverly; and his elderly, senile cousin Honora, who owns the boat and is in fact the family's financial anchor. The novel's chain of events is set into motion one night when a car crashes into a tree near the Wapshots' house. The driver is killed, but the passenger, a girl named Rosalie, is taken inside the Wapshots' house for convalescence. It's not long before Moses and Rosalie take advantage of the intimacy of their living arrangement and engage in intercourse, unaware that Honora is eavesdropping. Shocked by this display of debauchery, Honora vows to cut the family's financial ties loose unless Moses learns some responsibility and goes out into the world to make his own way. And so he leaves St. Botolphs to go to Washington to get a job, and Coverly sneaks away from his parents to accompany him. The two boys go their separate ways and each ends up married but in very different milieus with different sets of values. Coverly marries a poor Southern girl, becomes a technician on a rocket-launching site, and takes up residence in a homogenized modern suburb. His new life represents the modern (as of the 1950's), technical, practical, utilitarian world. It is taken even further into classic Cheeveresque territory when Coverly considers a ... relationship after his wife abandons him. Cheever's proclivity for ironic romanticism is represented in Moses's new life, which is quite a contrast to his brother's. After his prospects in Washington go sour, a chance encounter gives him a new opportunity as an aspiring banker. With his new connections, like Jack climbing up the freshly-sprouted beanstalk of society, somehow he ends up in a sort of fairy-tale world. He marries a beautiful princess named Melissa who is the ward of a wicked witch (the imperious harridan Justina Scaddon, heiress to a five-and-dime store fortune). He and Melissa are imprisoned in the wicked witch's castle (Justina's ancient expansive mansion), staffed by a legion of harried servants and cohabited by Justina's companion, the foppishly ... Count D'Alba. Leander keeps a journal, a sort of combination autobiography/family history, in which his entries are written in a choppy style of sentence fragments, as though he doesn't have enough time to put subjects in his sentences, and he writes letters to his sons in the same style. A problem of his own rears its ugly head in the form of a woman who claims to be his daughter from a previous marriage. This is an interesting plot line that unfortunately is not developed as fully as it could have been.I don't feel this novel is quite as great as Cheever's bes

The two Wapshot novels ("Chronicle followed by "Scandal") are John Cheever's first two novels. "The Wapshot Chronicle" follows Leander Wapshot's attempts to keep his dignity intact in spite of encroaching old age and his loss of career as a seaman. Leander's two sons, Moses and Coverly, have to make their own way in Cold War America armed with the airs and attitudes of 19th century New England WASPS; their encounters are both funny and poignant. In fact, "funny and poignant" characterizes much of Cheever's writing: he can have you chuckling at situational comedy in one instant and then ping your heart with human frailty in the next. "The Wapshot Chronicle" is a great introduction to Cheever, but if you think it's too much of a stretch, go for the stories or the more accessible novel "Falconer."