John Cheever Is A God

John Cheever, aside from being a kick-ass fiction writer, also wrote in the preface to his collection of short stories a really interesting take on the process of becoming a writer:

The parturition of a writer, I think, unlike that of a painter, does not display any interesting alliances to his masters. In the growth of a writer one finds nothing like the early Jackson Pollock copies of the Sistine Chapel paintings with their interesting cross-references to Thomas Hart Benton. A writer can be seen clumsily learning to walk, to tie his necktie, to make love, and to eat his peas off a fork. He appears much alone and determined to instruct himself. Naive, provincial in my case, sometimes drunk, sometimes obtuse, almost always clumsy, even a selected display of one's early work will be a naked history of one's struggle to receive an education in economics and love.

(From The Stories of John Cheever)

-- posted by Ariel Shepherd Oppenheim