As a child of the esteemed writer John Cheever, Benjamin Cheever grew up in a household filled with books. For 11 years, Benjamin worked as an editor. When he started writing, however, he found his literary voice in satire. Famous After Death is a darkly comic look at some of America's favorite obsessions. Noel Hammersmith, an overweight editor of diet books, yearns to be loved by beautiful women. If he can slim down, perhaps this will happen. If he were famous, it would help, too. As a bewildering series of bombs goes off in Noel's neighborhood, he is contacted by a visionary writer who calls himself Che Guevara. Through him, Noel sees a brilliant way to attain thinness and notoriety at the same time. Cheever sets up his brilliant satire with an editorial preface, where he introduces the novel as the authoritative text of The Compleat Wordsworth Bomber. By alternating Noel's journal entries, letters, and annotations added by unnamed editors, Cheever skillfully builds layers of humor into this tongue-in-cheek profile. An exclusive interview with Benjamin Cheever concludes the audio production.
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"Could easily be a true story in these days of our media driven society. If you grew up in the eighties, then you will easily identify." — James (4 out of 5 stars)
"Could easily be a true story in these days of our media driven society. If you grew up in the eighties, then you will easily identify."
“Cheever’s third novel is an artful mix of Noel’s correspondence and journals. His transcriptions of his psychiatric visits alone are worth the price of admission. But this burlesque is also a serious—and seriously funny—examination of the distance between our values and the goods we seem to value more.”
“Tongue-in-cheek and often outrageous, this thoroughly entertaining spoof is, sub rosa, a serious critique of contemporary culture’s obsession with weight, celebrity, and success.”
“[Cheever] uses a delightful variety of tale-telling techniques to move the plot along and leaves the reader thinking ‘It could happen!’”
“Hilarious and just bad-natured enough to be cruel (that is, accurate) in its satire of modern greed and modern fame: an across-the-board winner.”
" A dark comedy that is neither. "
" A decent out-of-sequence/reverse order novel that keeps teasing you with how crazy the protag might be. "
" Very interesting. Kept me thinking. "
" Quick read, different, but I don't think I'd recommend it. "
Benjamin Cheever, son of the novelist John Cheever, is the author of four adult fiction novels, one children’s book, and two nonfiction books. He has also been an editor at Reader’s Digest and a newspaper reporter for the New York Times, Nation, and New Yorker. He has taught at The New School for Social Research and the Benning MFA program and has hosted a television show called About Writing. He lives in Pleasantville, New York, with his wife and sons.
Johnny Heller, winner of numerous Earphones and Audie Awards, was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has been a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award winner from 2008 through 2013 and he has been named a top voice of 2008 and 2009 and selected as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine.
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