A few weeks ago I went to see an old friend who was apartment-sitting on the upper west side.  Before I left, I cheked out what was on the bookshelves.  It was as if they hadn’t bought a book in years, but many standard titles from the Eighties were there: “House,” by Tracy Kidder, “Edie,” by George Plimpton, and of course, “Growing Up,” by Russell Baker.

One book that wasn’t there, but very well could have been, was “The Collected Stories of John Cheever,” a book that I noticed at my grandparents’ apartment as a kid because of the reddish orange cover. 

There was a long piece in the Sunday magazine yesterday by Charles McGrath on Cheever, who lived one town over from where my mother lives in Westchester.  Interesting to see how a reputation changes over time.   

The Times has a wonderful page of articles devoted to Cheever.  Check it out, if you like that sort of thing.