Cheever: "The Enormous Radio"

Jim and Irene Westcott were the kind of people who seem to strike that satisfactory average of income, endeavor, and respectability that is reached by the statistical reports in college alumni bulletins. They were the parents of two young children, they had been married nine years, they lived on the twelfth floor of an apartment house near Sutton Place, they went to the theatre on an average of 10.3 times a year, and they hoped some day to live in Westchester. Irene Westcott was a pleasant, rather plain girl with soft brown hair and a wide, fine forehead upon which nothing at all had been written and in the cold weather she wore a coat of fitch skins dyed to resemble mink. You could not say that Jim Westcott looked younger than he was, but you could at least say of him that he seemed to feel younger. He wore his graying hair cut very short, he dressed in the kind of clothes his class had worn at Andover and his manner was earnest, vehement, and intentionally naive. The Westcotts differed from their friends, their classmates, and their neighbors only in an interest they shared in serious music. They went to a great many concerts - although they seldom mentioned this to anyone - and they spent a good deal of time listening to music on the radio. 

Their radio was an old instrument, sensitive, unpredictable, and beyond repair. Neither of them understood the mechanics of radio - or of any of the other appliances that surrounded them - and when the instrument faltered, Jim would strike the side of the cabinet with his hand. This sometimes helped. One Sunday afternoon, in the middle of a Schubert quartet, the music faded away altogether. Jim struck the cabinet repeatedly, but there was no response; the Schubert was lost to them forever. He promised to buy Irene a new radio, and on Monday when he came home from work he told her that he had got one. He refused to describe it, and said it would be a surprise for her when it came. 


-This is a bitchy gay man smirking at his subjects. The second sentence uses parallel structure to create a sense of monotonousness: "they were," "they had," "they lived," "they went," "they hoped." Numbers perform the same role in that sentence: "two," "nine," "twelfth," "ten point three." And then the punchline: The final part of the sentence doesn't have a number. "They hoped some day to live in Westchester." There's a great sense of deflation in that ending. This is their hope? Not a hope to see the pyramids. Not a hope to invent a new form of poetry, or to travel to the Lost City of the Monkey God. Nope. Their hope is "to live in Westchester."

-The third sentence feels like poetry, as well. Cheever deliberately leaves out a comma after "written"; the sentence gathers momentum until it hits two stressed syllables--"fitch skins." You don't even have to know what these are. You can hear the smallness and humbleness of a fitch skin in those two "short-I" sounds. As Irene hopes some day to live in Westchester, so, too, might she hope some day to own a real mink.

-There's a fairytale quality to the writing, and Jim and Irene seem to be like Hansel and Gretel. Irene has a "fine forehead upon which nothing at all has been written"; Jim makes a deliberate effort to seem younger than he is, with Andover-esque attire and a manner that is "earnest, vehement, and intentionally naive." (Can you picture this guy? Do you think of Ned Flanders?)

-Cheever gives an early indication that the Westcotts are in for a rude awakening. They are not terribly curious; they do not understand "the mechanics of radio, or of any of the other appliances that surround them." Their impotence is summarized by a striking motion: "Jim struck the cabinet repeatedly, but there was no response. The Schubert was lost to them forever." (It's also interesting that the Schubert--the one thing, so far, that makes the Westcotts remarkable, or semi-remarkable--is something "they seldom mention to anyone." And the disappearance of Schubert will prove to be the story's inciting moment: It's the crisis that provokes other crises, until the Westcotts fall apart. One really fun part of the story is that the stranger coming to town is not a hard-drinker or a floozy; it's a radio. In Cheever's hands, it seems possible to believe that a radio could have magical and transgressive powers.)

-John Cheever is the reason I know the phrase: "Love! Valour! Compassion!" He taped it to the wall in his office, as a kind of pep-talk-to-the-self. (And then Terrence McNally borrowed the phrase for his famous play.) When Cheever wrote, you could sense the wonder coming out of his pen; it was as if you were in the company of someone both childlike and very smart. He saw strange happenings underneath apparently banal surfaces. Useful ballast for the middle of a dreary work week!

P.S. I noticed something when rereading this story. It's the husband who cracks. He attacks the wife at the end. I think we see a hint of his weakness/crumbling nature in that very first paragraph; he is putting on a show; his innocence is strained. ("Intentionally naive.") So it's the husband who says to the wife, at the end: "Look, it's time for some self-reflection." The wife, with the untroubled forehead, hasn't ever bothered to examine her own past.

P.P.S. I think the way the Westcotts treat their broken radio says something about their way of being in the world. Learn nothing about it; swat away the problem; keep swatting until there's a change. It seems to me that this is also how the Westcotts respond to reminders of troubling events in their past. I don't know that Cheever intended a deliberate connection here--but I think he was so inspired, he may have planted those seeds without even realizing what he was doing.