Cheever, John. Falconer. New York: Ballantine, 1978.

Cheever's inevitable prison novel, telling the story of Ezekiel Farragut, a well-to-do heroin addict who kills his brother in a fit of anger by spearing him twenty-some times with a fire stoker. Here's how it happens:

"I know one thing," shouted Farragut. "I don't want to be your brother...."

"Kiss my ass," said Eben.

"You've got Dad's great sense of humor," Farragut said.

"He wanted you to be killed," screamed Eben. "I bet you didn't know that. He loved me, but he wanted you to be killed. Mother told me. He had an abortionist come out to the house. Your own father wanted you to be killed."

Then Farragut struck his brother with a fire iron....

Readers of Cheever's "Goodbye, My Brother" will recognize the situation readily, and readers of Cheever's letters or journals will also make special note of his hero's heroin addiction. Cheever, to my knowledge, never shot up smack, but he was a severe alcoholic, who would reward himself for waiting until noon before pouring himself a drink. The reward? Gin.

What's interesting about the novel is how one can watch the way prison—a place devoid of the world's riches as Cheever and his protagonists understand them: woman, drink, nature's bounty—becomes the only possible fictional space in which the author can explore his own personal demons. Which is to say it was impossible not to read this novel autobiographically, a reading I usually distrust. But for the first third or so of the novel we watch Farragut worry daily about his addiction and whether the prison doctor will administer his dose of methadone. And then all this rumination on the nature of addiction is dropped when a boy named Jody happens upon the scene and Farragut falls in love with him and they develop a steady sexual relationship. This, naturally, is maneuvered into carefully and trickily. Jody is "so glad [Farragut] ain't homosexual" (96) and Farragut wonders "if he could bring off his love for Jody in the street. Would he walk down the street with his arm around Jody's waist, would he kiss Jody at the airport....?" (107). Soon Jody breaks out of prison by masquerading as an altarboy (don't ask) and the question of whether a male-male love relationship could survive "the street" is dropped at once. The final third of the book wanders around discussing prison riots in general and Farragut's own sneaky breakout in specific.

One other thing is that at one point Cheever writes that "Obscenities recalled for Farragut the long-ago war with Germany and Japan" (36). Am I wrong in remembering that this was a war with Italy as well, and that Cheever's weird oversight of this major fact has to be written off to his ongoing love and obsession with that country? Maybe Italy was only a supporting actor in the drama of WWII, but I read such a line as powerfully naive and touching.

I'm being so condescending to one of the U.S.'s major writers. Is it because we share a birthday? Is it because the torment I read in his journals of loving and wanting to be with men was what probably pulled me the strongest from the proverbial closet? When I think of John Cheever I can only feel a constant regret. If he were alive I'd want to just pat him on the head a lot.