This week’s One Great Sentence, by the novelist John Cheever, has stayed with me all week. It’s an existential matter for writers and artists of all types, the battle between the introspective and mostly solitary process of creating and the … Read more
In August 1991, I read John Cheever’s journal excerpts published in The New Yorker. I was a 19-year-old college dropout, a waitress, and in the half hour before starting my shift, I sat outside my local library, electrified by this candid, … Read more
Why is it great? When I moved back to New England last year after nearly a lifetime away, John Cheever’s debut novel about a quirky New England family was the first thing I read. This sentence, near the beginning, captured … Read more