Suffered from "gephyrophobia" (fear of crossing bridges)
Won a National Book Award in 1958 for his novel "The Wapshot
Chronicle."
Won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for "The Stories of John Cheever."
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume
One, 1981-1985, pages 149-152. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1998.
His wife Mary Winternitz, born May 4 1918, died April 7 2014. She was also an author "The Need for Chocolate and Other Poems," and editor. Their daughter Susan Cheever wrote her own memoirs "Treetops".
Some years ago I said that I felt like a runner, concerned with my wind, my strength and the surrounding scenery, but concerned not at all with where I had been . . . it is still what I feel.
One has an impulse to bring glad tidings to someone. My sense of literature is a sense of giving, not a diminishment. I know of almost no pleasure greater than having a piece of fiction draw together disparate incidents so that they relate to one another and confirms that feeling that life itself is is a creative process.