About this title: THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLE takes place in St. Botolph's, Massachusetts, a fishing village in which a storm causes ferry pilot Leander Wapshot's boat to be damaged. His wife Sarah turns the ferry into a Floating Gift Shoppe, to Leander's discomfort, even though the shop pays for his sons' college educations. This novel is heavily based on Cheever's own upbringing in a northeastern town.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, New York
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780060916183ISBN:0060916184
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. minor edge creases/backcover. Trade paperback (US).307p. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: Time Reading Program Special Edition
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Time Life Books, New York
Date Published: 1965
Description: Very Good+ Clean, crisp pages in tight binding. Illustrated softcover with minor wear and rubbing. Spine creasing. Overall, a nice copy. Orders ship daily. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Bantam
Date Published: 1964
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Nice soft cover, lightly read, light shelf wear to cover, creases on spine, light aging, stk #1000aa. 310 p. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Bantam
Date Published: 1958
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Nice soft cover, lightly read, light shelf wear to cover, light creases on spine, light aging, light curl to book, stk #2387L7. 310 p. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Time Inc., New York
Date Published: 1965
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Nice soft cover, lightly read, light shelf wear to cover, stk #2066k6. xix, 385 p. Time reading program special edition / with a new introduction by the author. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Bantam
Date Published: 1964
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Unmarked reading copy with sound binding. Ships first class. 310p., 18 cm. Originally published, Harper, 1957. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books
Date Published: 1964
Description: Good. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Some cover, edge wear, rub. Pages good, no writing. Good reading copy. Rich sweeping, Rabelaisian chronicle of a Nnew England family named Wapshot who stubbornly refused to leth the sap of life run dry. 310 pages. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Time Reading Program NY 1965
Date Published: 1965
Description: Good. ---385 Pages. Interior overall good condition. Covers have light signs of use. -Publish Place: New York-Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. read more
"This is an incredible book -- so many sentences seemed like lessons on how to be a great writer. The ending (last 75 pages or so) is obviously what has kept this book from greater canonization."
"I was hesitant to begin reading Cheever (I have no idea why I believed his fiction wouldn't interest me), and even more skeptical about starting with a novel rather than his more well-regarded short stories. However, this novel was nothing short of excellent, and makes me even more excited to turn to his short fiction. The Wapshot Chronicle tells the tale of a single family's existence in and around St. Botolph's, a fishing village on the northern coast of Massachusetts. The novel focuses most heavily on the wildly complex relations between the patriarch of the family and his two sons, who are as different as they come. As the sons attempt to chart their own courses, both geographically and emotionally removing themselves from their hometown, the full strength of their family ties abruptly surfaces, again and again.
As my summary suggests, the story is an old one, but the expression is entirely unique and wondrous (if sometimes slightly uneven) to read. At its best, Cheever slips out of the third person into the minds and hearts of his characters, recreating their journal entries, suggesting their innermost anxieties. He also makes some of the most affective use of the second person I've ever encountered. An example: "You walk and walk and walk, changing your suitcase from hand to hand. You pass lighted store fronts, monuments, theaters and saloons. You hear dance music and the thunder of tenpins from an upstairs bowling alley and wonder how long it will be before you being to play a role against this new scene. You will have a desk, a secretary, a telephone extension, duties, worries, triumphs and promotions. In the meantime, you will be a lover. You will meet a girl by that monument on the corner, buy her some dinner in that restaurant across the street and be taken home by her to that apartment in the distance. You will have friends and enjoy them as these two men, swinging down the street in shirt sleeves, are enjoying each other. You may belong to a bowling club that bowls in the alley whose thunder you hear. You will have money to spend and you may buy that raincoat in the store window on your right. You may--who knows?--buy a red convertible like that red convertible that is traveling southeast above the trees, and you may even be a father holding a little girl by one hand and a quart of strawberry ice cream in the other. It is only a question of days before the part begins, you think, although it must in fact have begun as soon as you entered the scene with your suitcase."
Cheever's prose, second person or not, is filled with this sort of density and richness. It makes you want to linger over sentences and exposes the power of small moments and gestures. Its meaning is in its intricacy, and its strength is such that it carries what shortcomings this novel might have in terms of its plot. A page-turner this novel is not, but it is well-worth the effort."
"I read John Cheever years ago when he was still active in the 1970s and enjoyed his short stories immensely. I had never read this book, a national book award winner in the 1950s, and didn't really like it until the very end when I could understand the whole story better. I particularly enjoyed some fatherly advice from this last part; it reminded me of things my father had said, particularly this saying. "Beer on whisky, very risky. Whisky on beer, never fear.""
"Not at all what I expected; yes, there are WASPs committing adultery (some of them), but not at suburban cocktail parties, and the WASPs are poor and live on a farm in a small town. They swim in rivers and swimming holes rather than backyard pools. The men are fuelled by testosterone and the women by anger and righteousness, yet these are enchanting characters in an eccentric family and it's impossible not to like them. The book has many hilarious passages. Sometimes I was reminded of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, other times of Mark Helprin. Sometimes I wondered where the book was going (the plot is a bit wendy), what Cheever was doing, and how many more pages would be stuck together with sticky food residues from decades long past."
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