Our first in-person meeting of 2026 (Jan. 7) will be devoted to John Cheever's controversial novel, Falconer. In anticipation of that discussion, I wanted to share this Atlantic article about a new memoir by his daughter, Susan Cheever, Home Before Dark, in which "she searches for the wellspring of her father’s genius—and digs through his secrets," Adam Begley writes.
I found this excerpt from Begley's review particularly telling:
"Perhaps the eeriest example [of her quest to understand her father] ... is her interview with her father when she was a 33-year-old working at Newsweek; the cover story was a profile of him just after he’d published Falconer (1977), which features a love affair between the protagonist, incarcerated for fratricide, and a fellow inmate. The journalist daughter asked, “Did you ever fall in love with another man?” The novelist father artfully replied that it could indeed happen, “but I would think twice about giving up the robustness and merriment I have known in the heterosexual world.” Robustness! Merriment! She then asked point-blank if he’d ever had a “homosexual experience.” Instead of answering in the negative as she expected, he said, “I have had many, Susie, all tremendously gratifying.” A dreadful pause before he continued, laughing, “and all between the ages of 9 and 11.”
"She took that as a no and soldiered on with the interview; the curious exchange was printed in the magazine. And she continued to think of her father as straight until she started reading his journals a couple of months after cancer killed him, at age 70. She decided that she should be the one to reveal his sexuality, and resolved to find “a loving way to do it.” Tender, sad and respectful, Home Before Dark is a proud daughter’s elegy for an unhappy parent."
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