SOURCE: “Cheever's Stories: Style and Substance,” in Commonweal, Vol. CVI, No. 1, January 19, 1979, pp. 20-22.

In the following essay, Hunt argues that Cheever's stories provide more than social commentary; they are lyrical and funny without being merely satiric.

John Cheever has won many awards for his fiction, but the praise and prizes have been reserved for his four excellent novels, The Wapshot Chronicle, The Wapshot Scandal, Bullet Park, and Falconer. Short stories, by contrast, rarely win important prizes, and collections of stories do not sell well. Cheever persists nonetheless in this neglected genre, which he terms “the literature of the nomad.” The Stories of John Cheever (Knopf, 695 pp., $15), a handsomely designed and printed edition of 61 stories, represents his greatest achievement.

For too long critics have been idly content with the clichés “Cheever country” and “Cheeveresque,” a reviewer's shorthand betraying a sensibility less wide and deep than the author's...