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The John Cheever Audio Collection Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Here are twelve magnificent stories in which John Cheever celebrates—with unequaled grace and tenderness—the deepest feelings we have.
As Cheever writes in his preface, ""These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.""
John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1978 The Stories of John Cheever won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly before his death, in 1982, he was awarded the National Medal for Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
The preface is read by Benjamin Cheever, author of The Plagiarist, The Parisian and Famous after Death. The stories include:
- The Enormous Radio read by Meryl Streep
- The Five-Forty-Eight read by Edward Herrmann
- O City of Broken Dreams read by Blythe Danner
- Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor read by George Plimpton
- The Season of Divorce read by Edward Herrmann
- The Brigadier and the Golf Widow read by Peter Gallagher
- The Sorrows of Gin read by Meryl Streep
- O Youth and Beauty! read by Peter Gallagher
- The Chaste Clarissa read by Blythe Danner
- The Jewels of the Cabots read by George Plimpton
- The Death of Justina read by John Cheever
- The Swimmer read by John Cheever
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“If you’ve ever wished the characters in an Edward Hopper painting would come alive and tell their stories, then don’t miss this luminous recording…John Cheever himself delivers the final two stories—at a breakneck clip but with the intelligence and vitality that shine throughout his work.”
— AudioFile
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“The real delight in this collection of twelve stories is hearing the tales interpreted by numerous readers…This audio is highly entertaining and recommended.”
— Booklist (starred review)
Awards
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Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award
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About John Cheever
John Cheever (1912-1982), best known for his short stories dealing with upper-middle-class suburban life, was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. Cheever published his first short story at the age of seventeen. He was the recipient of a 1951 Guggenheim Fellowship and winner of a National Book Award for The Wapshot Chronicle in 1958, the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Stories of John Cheever, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and an American Book Award. He died in 1982, at the age of seventy.
About the Narrators
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.
Meryl Streep, considered by many movie reviewers to be the greatest living film actress, has been nominated for an Academy Award an astonishing sixteen times and has won it three times. She has also garnered two Emmy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and six Drama Desk Awards. In 2004, she was awarded the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also an Audie Award and Grammy Award–winning narrator.
Peter Gallagher is an award-winning actor of stage, film, and audio. He was among the cast of narrators for Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald that won an AudioFile Earphones Award and placed as a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award in 2002. In 2004 he was part of the narrating cast for The John Cheever Audio Collection, which was a finalist for the Audie Award in two categories: Short Stories/Collections and Achievement in Production.
Meryl Streep, considered by many movie reviewers to be the greatest living film actress, has been nominated for an Academy Award an astonishing sixteen times and has won it three times. She has also garnered two Emmy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and six Drama Desk Awards. In 2004, she was awarded the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also an Audie Award and Grammy Award–winning narrator.
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.