Susan Cheever – ~*LunaSea*~

Cheever, Susan. Treetops: a Family Memoir. Bantam Books, 1991.

Reason read: Read in honor of Cheever’s birth month in July.

Susan Cheever had already written a biography of her father called Home Before Dark so I was excited when she wrote in the introduction to Treetops that this was a book about the three generations of her mother’s family and Treetops as a place. By the end of the introduction she returns to the men: Tom Watson the inventor who assisted Alexander Graham Bell, Winter the grandfather who started the Yale School of Medicine and of course, her father, acclaimed writer John Cheever. Susan Cheever’s father dominates a great deal of the Treetops story…again. Cheever needs to share her father’s accolades and affairs with a healthy dose of name-dropping. It would have been refreshing if Treetops contained less about the man she had already written a full biography about and concentrated more on her mother’s life. Her mother is talked about as footnotes when she describes the short stories (in detail) of her father’s. Cheever would rather describe her father’s relationships with, and perception of, women as a gender. Most of the time the details of her mother as in reaction to something her father said, did, or wrote. The more Susan Cheever quoted her father’s short stories the less I enjoyed Treetops.

As an aside, when Cheever relived the invention of the telephone and detailed exactly what happened between Alexander Graham Bell and her great-grandfather Thomas Watson, I know she was setting up the historical backdrop to her family’s history, but I couldn’t help but think it was also device to subtly suggest Watson invented the telephone and Bell took all the credit.

Author fact: I have satisfied all of the Susan Cheever books I needed for the Challenge.

Book trivia: there are a smattering of photographs in Treetops.

Music: Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, and “Happy Birthday.”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “All in the Family: Writer Dynasties” (p 5). Pearl put it perfectly when she said that when you related to someone famous there is almost an “irresistible temptation to write about the experience” (More Book Lust p 5). Cheever takes it a step further by writing about her famous great grandfather and notable grandfather as well.

Cheever, Susan. Home Before Dark: a Biographical Memoir of John Cheever by His Daughter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984.

With this help of her father’s diaries and journals, Susan Cheever is able to put together a personal and detailed biography of her father, famous author John Cheever. Unlike third party (clearly outsider) biographies Susan is able to insert her own recollections and feelings into the memoir. She makes no excuses for the love/hate battle she waged with her dad. As a biographer writing about a loved one it is tempting to gloss over the not so pretty aspects of one’s life but Susan tackles the tough material with grace. She does not shirk from her father’s early failures as a writer not does she make excuses for his volatile marriage and heavy drinking. What she presents is a snapshot of society and her father’s successes and failures in it.

This is the second memoir I have read about fathers this year. I was fascinated with the writers’ retreat where Cheever spent some time. Since it is in Saratoga Springs, a place I have been to before, I had to research a visit.

Quotes I liked, “Places he could enjoy without owning them” (p 32) and “Without a novel, there could be no solid literary reputation” (p 99).

Reason read: Susan Cheever’s birth month is in July (the 31st).

Author fact: Susan has a brother named Ben who also wrote books.

Book trivia: Home Before Dark is only one of Susan’s biographies about her family.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “All in the Family: Writing Dynasties” (p 4).