John Cheever, best known for his short stories dealing with upper-middle-class suburban life, was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912.
Cheever published his first short story at the age of 17. He was the recipient of a 1951 Guggenheim Fellowship and winner of a National Book Award for “The Wapshot Chronicle” in 1958, the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “The Stories of John Cheever,” the National Book Critics Circle Award and an American Book Award. He died in 1982, at the age of 70.
In March, the Library of America will publish the largest volume of Cheever’s stories, “Collected Stories and Other Writings,” as well as a volume of “Collected Novels.” The stories were selected by Cheever’s biographer, Blake Bailey, whose “Cheever: A Life,” was published in March.
