
The John Cheever Audio Collection (Unabridged Stories)
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Narrated by:
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Meryl Streep
-
George Plimpton
-
others
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By:
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John Cheever
About this listen
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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-
Story
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-
The Chaste Clarissa
- The John Cheever Audio Collection
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Father knows best - or does he? Reliable family man Jim Anderson deals with the everyday problems of postwar life in the radio precursor to the famous 1950s TV series. Robert Young stars in these 16 heartwarming comedy classics - including several previously uncirculated broadcasts. Visit the white frame house on Maple Street, and listen in as Father struggles to keep his cool and set a good example in spite of an onslaught of surprises, secrets, and shenanigans!
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The Sorrows of Gin
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-
Story
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-
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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Critic reviews
"A remarkable treat for lovers of audiobooks...The inclusion of Cheever's readings makes for a deeply personal, resonant finale to a truly superb production." (Publishers Weekly)
"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....An incomparable set of narrators delivers the stories with perfection." (AudioFile)
People who viewed this also viewed...
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The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
-
-
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-
The Swimmer
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- Length: 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
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Story
Here is the preface to 12 magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.
-
-
Odd story of suburbia
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Essential Cheever
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- Narrated by: John Cheever, Meryl Streep
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Enormous Radio and The Swimmer are two magnificent stories in which John Cheever celebrates with unequaled grace and tenderness the deepest feelings we have. As Cheever wrote, "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."
By: John Cheever
-
Bullet Park
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eliot Nailles loves his wife and son to distraction; his Bullet Park neighbour, Paul Hammer, is a bastard named after a common household tool. The pair become fatefully linked by the mysterious binding power of their names.
-
-
The Great John Cheever
- By ebbes bruk on 10-30-18
By: John Cheever
-
The John Updike Audio Collection
- By: John Updike
- Narrated by: Jane Alexander, Edward Herrmann, John Updike
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful. The texts are taken from his recent omnibus, The Early Stories, 1953-1975.
-
-
Good read
- By Jody on 06-03-04
By: John Updike
-
Falconer
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A convict named Farragut struggles to remain a man while inside a nightmarish prison. Cheever crafted his most powerful work of fiction out of Farragut's suffering and astonishing salvation.
-
-
Unsettling and beautiful
- By Darwin8u on 01-21-13
By: John Cheever
-
The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
-
-
Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
- By Darwin8u on 05-31-13
By: John Cheever
-
The Swimmer
- The John Cheever Audio Collection
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: John Cheever
- Length: 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the preface to 12 magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.
-
-
Odd story of suburbia
- By an amazonian tourist on 12-18-22
By: John Cheever
-
Essential Cheever
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: John Cheever, Meryl Streep
- Length: 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Enormous Radio and The Swimmer are two magnificent stories in which John Cheever celebrates with unequaled grace and tenderness the deepest feelings we have. As Cheever wrote, "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."
By: John Cheever
-
Bullet Park
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eliot Nailles loves his wife and son to distraction; his Bullet Park neighbour, Paul Hammer, is a bastard named after a common household tool. The pair become fatefully linked by the mysterious binding power of their names.
-
-
The Great John Cheever
- By ebbes bruk on 10-30-18
By: John Cheever
-
The John Updike Audio Collection
- By: John Updike
- Narrated by: Jane Alexander, Edward Herrmann, John Updike
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful. The texts are taken from his recent omnibus, The Early Stories, 1953-1975.
-
-
Good read
- By Jody on 06-03-04
By: John Updike
-
Falconer
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A convict named Farragut struggles to remain a man while inside a nightmarish prison. Cheever crafted his most powerful work of fiction out of Farragut's suffering and astonishing salvation.
-
-
Unsettling and beautiful
- By Darwin8u on 01-21-13
By: John Cheever
-
Where I'm Calling From
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- By: Raymond Carver
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the great practitioners of the American short story. Where I'm Calling From, his last collection, encompasses classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier Carver volumes, along with seven new works previously unpublished in book form.
-
-
Love Carver, But Dietz Ruins It With Reading
- By Noirbat on 05-10-18
By: Raymond Carver
-
The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story
- By: John Freeman - editor
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett, Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past 50 years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of genres have brought this unique US genre a thrilling burst of energy. This rich anthology celebrates this avalanche of talent. Beginning in 1970, it culls together a half century of powerful American short stories from all genres, including - for the first time in a literary anthology - science fiction, horror, and fantasy.
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Too dark for my taste
- By Lazy Chicken on 10-03-22
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Perhaps Frank and April Wheeler married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to unravel. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.
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The Enormous Radio
- The John Cheever Audio Collection
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the preface to 12 magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.
-
-
Get the Collection Instead!
- By Michael on 03-09-19
By: John Cheever
-
Wonderful Town
- New York Stories from The New Yorker
- By: Woody Allen, John Cheever, E. B. White, and others
- Narrated by: Tyne Daly, Timothy Jerome, Joe Morton, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the 75-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of 44 of its best stories from (so to speak) home.
-
-
Great stories and readers, but technically sloppy
- By Alison on 09-08-04
By: Woody Allen, and others
-
A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker
- 1925-2025
- By: New Yorker Magazine Inc, Deborah Treisman - editor
- Narrated by: Deborah Treisman, full cast
- Length: 46 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is simply no A-Z like the alphabet of fiction writers who have appeared in the pages of The New Yorker in the last hundred years. The book boasts inarguable classics like Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” alongside stunners to be rediscovered. Some stories defined a moment or a now-lost world (Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “The Cafeteria”); others showed us a whole new way fiction could sound and feel (“The Red Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid).
-
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A thoroughly satisfying anthology of short stories to savor
- By Patti Sprouse on 05-01-25
By: New Yorker Magazine Inc, and others
I liked the choice of narrators as well.
Love John Cheever !
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All Stars Deliver
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Great readers - fabulous stories
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At times I wish I could be more learned or cultured so I could *enjoy* and *appreciate* such a bleak set of stories. In those times, I wonder if I suffer as a result of my deficiencies. Maybe not. I've savored three recent phenomenal sets of stories that include within them themes with a melancholy bent: National Book Award-winning "Fortune Smiles: Stories" by Adam Johnson, "Thirteen Ways of Looking: Fiction," by Colum McCann, and "The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories," by Anthony Marra. The difference, I think, lies in whether the stories as a set reveal some glimpse of hope in humanity, some hint of redemption or forgiveness, some implication that evil has been or may be defeated in a battle of the forces--just one battle, for I don't suffer the delusion that good will conquer evil for all time, so long as humans live on this Earth.
With this collection, I just have a hard time seeing the redemptive. If this classifies me as a naive idealist or a resident of a fantasy world, then so be it.
Cheever's most famous story, "The Enormous Radio" (1947), serves to illustrate why I'm not particularly fond of this set of stories. In it, an NYC husband buys a "dark" gumwood cabinet radio (back when the radio was centerpiece furniture) for his family's 12th floor apartment despite their inability to afford it. When The Enormous Radio begins picking up conversations from others in their building, they are fascinated then shocked by some of the conversations and happenings. The wife (homemaker) becomes obsessed with a near-constant eavesdropping, which turns to fear that others can hear her family's conversations, and then becomes depressed from her steady consumption of the problems of an entire building. I won't say more about the story except that this collection to me is much like the Enormous Radio in that I get depressed hearing about others' (even fictional others') adultery, alcoholism and domestic abjection (all of these stories touch on one of these 3 areas) without a silver lining SOMEWHERE.
Don't misunderstand me. John Cheever certainly wrote the types of stories I appreciate and enjoy, including a few in this assortment. And yet, as a whole, this selection acts as quite a depressant. Oh, to be sure, these stories were likely grand in the late 40s through the early 1970s when they were written since they showed that the shiny, happy people from the City (in his early years) and the suburbs (in his later) suffering problems that Hollywood would not show on the television, in shows like "I Love Lucy," "Leave it to Beaver," "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," and "Father Knows Best."
My favorite of these collected stories is "The Sorrows of Gin," in which a pre-teen daughter named Amy watches her parents get deeper and deeper into the bottle, attending parties nearly every night and rarely having an interest in Amy or her life. Cheever could write this from experience, as a lifelong alcoholic whose relationships were decimated by his alcohol abuse. I have not read or seen a story that so distilled (pun intended) the negative effects of alcoholism on a family. I said "alcoholism," not "alcohol"--most people can drink in moderation and only occasionally; the alcoholic, for whatever reason, cannot. Here, the selfish parents are more concerned with the next party, next drink, and thus steal time, love and care from their daughter. In a way so superbly shown in the story, Amy's reaction and attempt to "save" her parents leads to an unexpected demoralization of the family unit.
The narrators of this collection are excellent actors, all of them, including Blythe Danner, Meryl Streep and the late, great Edward Herrmann.
All A's - Adultery, Alcoholism, Abjection
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Ballads for the Broken
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Hilarious, dark, sometimes disturbing
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What did you love best about The John Cheever Audio Collection (Unabridged Stories)?
The stories and narration were superb. Until the last two stories, which Cheever narrated. His voice wasn't the greatest.Any additional comments?
I wish there were more collections of this quality.Fantastic collection and narration
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reasonably balanced performances
the end came too quickly for me
warm nostalgia
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The writing is impeccable and the other narrators
skilled and professional
Cheever’s Not a skilled narrator
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This collection contains "The Enormous Radio," "The Five-Forty-Eight," "O City of Broken Dreams," "Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor," "The Season of Divorce," "The Brigadier and the Golf Widow," "The Sorrows of Gin," "O Youth and Beauty!," "The Chaste Clarissa," "The Jewels of the Cabots," "The Death of Justina," and "The Swimmer."
My favorites with THE SWIMMER, THE ENORMOUS RADIO, and THE FIVE-FORTY-EIGHT.
The narration is excellent.
Great Collection - Including The Swimmer
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