The World of Apples

📖 The Scoop

"This is the first collection in nine years by the author of the Wapshot novels, Bullet Park, and many of the most celebrated short stories ("The Swimmer," "The Enormous Radio") of our time. Once again, we are seduced into the suburban here and now of his characters - this moment, America. Innocent, old-fashioned, self-aware, often hilariously funny, Cheever's people are summoned by strange and improbable events to ponder the values they have been taught to trust - decency, common sense, a feeling for nostalgia, even Truth. Yet, however stunned they are by these encounters, they survive: to be glad for the new suit, the snow tires, the parties and beaches, their substantial friends - or to be fooled by the smell of rain into thinking they are young. An old, outrageous American poet (who has won everything but the Nobel Prize) finds peace of heart as he lays his Lermontov medal at the foot of the sacred angel; a prosperous suburban man contemplates his predicament after his wife announces that she has joined the cast of a nude show ("Most of my friends were tactful about Bertha's new life"); a romantic and guileless well digger, anxious for a bride, visits Russia, falls in love in three minutes, and returns home "singing the unreality blues"; a miserably married middle-aged man fantasizes a beautiful over who comes to him for strength, love, and counsel while he tends the charcoal grill in the back yard; the belly of a man named Lawrence Farnsworth discusses the felt metaphysics of obesity... These dazzling stories - each one singular and enchanting - constitute a major collection from an important American writer." --

Genre: Fiction / General (fancy, right?)