The Country Husband by John Cheever, 1954
The magic trick:
A late story pulling back of the camera to see our protagonist’s drama in the context of the entire Shady Hill community
Two John Cheever stories for you this week. Published 10 years apart, they nevertheless are family members from the same tree of twisted Cheever suburbia. Both feature protagonists pursuing extramarital relationships that appear to them each as kind of epiphanies; wake-up calls that nothing in their apparently successful lives is as successful as it seems.
So what are the stories I’m talking about? “The Country Husband” today and then tomorrow, “Marito In Citta.”
“The Country Husband” typically is referenced among Cheever’s most famous classics. It’s very much of its time, meaning it reads a bit dated now. But there’s no denying it’s a fine piece of writing.
By now, we seasoned SSMT readers are accustomed to suburban satires. It quickly became a genre unto itself for movies, sitcoms, and, yes, short stories. Suburbia is just so ripe for mockery, of course. And much of that satire can be hilarious. It also can verge into mean-spiritedness or just be so obvious that it becomes boring.
Cheever, of course, was on the front lines, the birth of the suburbs in the 1940s and 50s. We can probably give him a lot of credit for inventing the suburban satire genre! Here’s the thing, though. I don’t find his version of this satire to ever be mean and it certainly isn’t predictable or boring.
And so we arrive at “The Country Husband,” where Cheever’s satire is remarkably nuanced and balanced. He takes this protagonist seriously – even as we see him stumble selfishly into a series of cartoonishly bad ideas and poor decisions. We’re with him, getting his side of the story, the whole way.
Then, suddenly, at the end of the story, the camera pulls back and we see a snippet of our protagonist’s resolution (he’s going to fight this midlife crisis of his by getting into woodworking!) – but just a snippet. We move quickly to pan around the neighborhood, and we see the other things that each person in Shady Hill is doing. The effect is dazzling. Not only does it lump our hero’s story in with an entire community, thus broadening the characterizations to encompass a way of life and not just one man, this late-story device also gently satirizes all these people. They care so much about what they’re doing here in suburban New York City. They’re completely absorbed (as we have been for the previous 20 pages) with their own victories and troubles; yet we can see them with a quick single-paragraph sweep of the neighborhood as tiny troubles and victories that are limited at best. It’s a celebration of life just as it critiques it at the same time.
A true master at work here.
And that’s quite a trick on Cheever’s part.
The selection:
Dr. Herzog recommends woodwork as a therapy, and Francis finds some true consolation in the simple arithmetic involved and in the holy smell of new wood. Francis is happy. Upstairs, little Toby is crying, because he is tired. He puts off his cowboy hat, gloves, and fringed jacket, unbuckles the belt studded with gold and rubies, the silver bullets and holsters, slips off his suspenders, his checked shirt, and Levi’s, and sits on the edge of his bed to pull off his high boots. Leaving this equipment in a heap, he goes to the closet and takes his space suit off a nail. It is a struggle for him to get into the long tights, but he succeeds. He loops the magic cape over his shoulders and, climbing onto the footboard of his bed, he spreads his arms and flies the short distance to the floor, landing with a thump that is audible to everyone in the house but himself.
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