The Comptons lived in the house next to the Blakes, and Mrs. Compton had never understood the importance of minding her own business. Louise Blake took her troubles to Mrs. Compton, Blake knew, and instead of discouraging her crying jags, Mrs. Compton had come to imagine herself a sort of confessor and had developed a lively curiosity about the Blakes’ intimate affairs. She had probably been given an account of their most recent quarrel. Blake had come home one night, overworked and tired, and had found that Louise had done nothing about getting supper. He had gone into the kitchen, followed by Louise, and had pointed out to her that the date was the fifth. He had drawn a circle around the date on the kitchen calendar. “One week is the twelfth,” he had said. “Two weeks will be the nineteenth.” He drew a circle around the nineteenth. “I’m not going to speak to you for two weeks,” he had said. “That will be the nineteenth.” She had wept, she had protested, but it had been eight or ten years since she had been able to touch him with her entreaties. Louise had got old. Now the lines in her face were ineradicable, and when she clapped her glasses onto her nose to read the evening paper, she looked to him like an unpleasant stranger. The physical charms that had been her only attraction were gone. It had been nine years since Blake had built a bookshelf in the doorway that connected their rooms and had fitted into the bookshelf wooden doors that could be locked, since he did not want the children to see his books. But their prolonged estrangement didn’t seem remarkable to Blake. He had quarreled with his wife, but so did every other man born of woman. It was human nature. In any place where you can hear their voices--a hotel courtyard, an air shaft, a street on a summer evening--you will hear harsh words.
-Matthew Weiner has said that Cheever was a gold standard for him; he tried to aspire to Cheever levels when he wrote “Mad Men.” Cheever’s “The Five-Forty-Eight” reminds me of a moment when Don Draper has slept with one of his secretaries. There’s a blow-up; the secretary is leaving the firm; she demands a letter of recommendation from Don. Don doesn’t want to go to the trouble of thinking deeply about this person and crafting a letter, but he also doesn’t want to acknowledge his own laziness--so he says, as if offering a gift, “Why don’t you just write whatever you want, and I promise I’ll sign my name to it?” Stunned by this callousness, the secretary calls a spade a spade. She has *not* been offered a gift. It’s a rare moment where a woman challenges Don in the workplace. That’s the kind of thing that is happening in “The Five-Forty-Eight.”
-The extraordinary paragraph above happens early in Cheever’s story. The very awful, very human Blake has stepped onto his train. He is a person concerned with appearances; it bothers him when a neighbor does not observe “the sumptuary laws.” When a woman he has wronged confronts him on the train, his concern is not for the woman, but for himself, because of the possibility that others will be judging him w/r/t this outburst. (“I’m sorry that you’ve been sick,” he says loudly, so that strangers can overhear him. I love the hypocrisy built into this tiny detail.) On the train, Mrs. Compton has a fleeting smile that dies “swiftly and horribly,” and the story of Blake and his wife explains the death of the smile.
-Cheever is a master of gesture and detail. What’s so chilling about this paragraph is how the “punishment” does not fit the “crime.” Louise has not prepared dinner, perhaps because she is clinically depressed, and perhaps her reptilian husband has something to do with her clinical depression. Coolly, and via tight third-person narration, Cheever explains the game with the calendar. The fact that Blake doesn’t explain what he’s doing...the sickening suspense as he flips through that calendar....Then, the sadistic, infantilizing speech he gives, as if addressing a child: “I’m not going to speak to you for two weeks. That will be the nineteenth.” It’s enough to make your hair stand on end. From there, the horror show grows and grows: That verb phrase, “clapped her glasses onto her nose,” as if describing a dog’s clumsy motions, does wonders to capture the repugnance Blake feels. Building a bookshelf where a connecting door once existed, then adding locked barriers so the children can’t get access to the books: Blake is exposing to us the shallow nature of his own crummy soul. And Cheever writes without judgment; he won’t allow Blake to become a cartoon villain. He seems to be asking: Dear Reader, if you sift through your own memories, can you say, with assurance, you have never, never been as uncharitable as Blake?
-And so. A gap between the iciness of the voice and the horrors described. A close attention to gesture and detail: “clapped her glasses,” “fleeting smile died swiftly and horribly,” “lines in her face were ineradicable.” Nastiness revealed through turns of phrase: “her crying jags,” “a lively curiosity,” “her only attraction.” And--weirdly--some compassion for the villain. There’s no doubt Cheever can write so well and so fully about Blake because he himself has been in Blake’s shoes, and he has the courage to scrutinize the less-alluring corners of his own flawed soul. Suspense, gesture, surprising empathy. These are main headings in the Cheever playbook. At his best, Cheever gets so close to some cosmic, unstated truths that you, the reader, are then briefly, newly filled with wonder at the thought of being alive.
-Matthew Weiner has said that Cheever was a gold standard for him; he tried to aspire to Cheever levels when he wrote “Mad Men.” Cheever’s “The Five-Forty-Eight” reminds me of a moment when Don Draper has slept with one of his secretaries. There’s a blow-up; the secretary is leaving the firm; she demands a letter of recommendation from Don. Don doesn’t want to go to the trouble of thinking deeply about this person and crafting a letter, but he also doesn’t want to acknowledge his own laziness--so he says, as if offering a gift, “Why don’t you just write whatever you want, and I promise I’ll sign my name to it?” Stunned by this callousness, the secretary calls a spade a spade. She has *not* been offered a gift. It’s a rare moment where a woman challenges Don in the workplace. That’s the kind of thing that is happening in “The Five-Forty-Eight.”
-The extraordinary paragraph above happens early in Cheever’s story. The very awful, very human Blake has stepped onto his train. He is a person concerned with appearances; it bothers him when a neighbor does not observe “the sumptuary laws.” When a woman he has wronged confronts him on the train, his concern is not for the woman, but for himself, because of the possibility that others will be judging him w/r/t this outburst. (“I’m sorry that you’ve been sick,” he says loudly, so that strangers can overhear him. I love the hypocrisy built into this tiny detail.) On the train, Mrs. Compton has a fleeting smile that dies “swiftly and horribly,” and the story of Blake and his wife explains the death of the smile.
-Cheever is a master of gesture and detail. What’s so chilling about this paragraph is how the “punishment” does not fit the “crime.” Louise has not prepared dinner, perhaps because she is clinically depressed, and perhaps her reptilian husband has something to do with her clinical depression. Coolly, and via tight third-person narration, Cheever explains the game with the calendar. The fact that Blake doesn’t explain what he’s doing...the sickening suspense as he flips through that calendar....Then, the sadistic, infantilizing speech he gives, as if addressing a child: “I’m not going to speak to you for two weeks. That will be the nineteenth.” It’s enough to make your hair stand on end. From there, the horror show grows and grows: That verb phrase, “clapped her glasses onto her nose,” as if describing a dog’s clumsy motions, does wonders to capture the repugnance Blake feels. Building a bookshelf where a connecting door once existed, then adding locked barriers so the children can’t get access to the books: Blake is exposing to us the shallow nature of his own crummy soul. And Cheever writes without judgment; he won’t allow Blake to become a cartoon villain. He seems to be asking: Dear Reader, if you sift through your own memories, can you say, with assurance, you have never, never been as uncharitable as Blake?
-And so. A gap between the iciness of the voice and the horrors described. A close attention to gesture and detail: “clapped her glasses,” “fleeting smile died swiftly and horribly,” “lines in her face were ineradicable.” Nastiness revealed through turns of phrase: “her crying jags,” “a lively curiosity,” “her only attraction.” And--weirdly--some compassion for the villain. There’s no doubt Cheever can write so well and so fully about Blake because he himself has been in Blake’s shoes, and he has the courage to scrutinize the less-alluring corners of his own flawed soul. Suspense, gesture, surprising empathy. These are main headings in the Cheever playbook. At his best, Cheever gets so close to some cosmic, unstated truths that you, the reader, are then briefly, newly filled with wonder at the thought of being alive.
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