Transcript of Book Beat radio feature on John Cheever Don Swaim Collection (MSS #117), Mahn Center for Archives & Special Collections, Ohio University Libraries Broadcast circa June 19, 1982 Audio file copied from donswaim.com Book Beat page donswaim_com_john_cheever_obits_6_18_82_02.txt

​- [Jack Welby] John Cheever has died of cancer at his home in Ossining, New York. Cheevers was seventy and had been known as the Chekov of the suburbs for his penetrating tales of commuterland Americans. We have more from Don Swaim. - [Don Swaim] John Cheever was the kind of writer that most all of the literary inclination wanted to be like. While he won the National Book Award for his novel the Wapshot Chronicle in 1958, and indeed his novel Falconer gave him a permanent place in 20th century literature, he was most at home with the short story. That is recognized in the fact that he won the Pulitzer prize for his collection, The Stories of John Cheever, in 1978. His latest work, Oh What A Paradise It Seems, is a short but beautiful novel. It opens almost like a fable. - [Don Swaim quoting John Cheever] This is a story to be read in bed in an old house on a rainy night. The dogs are asleep and the saddle horses...can be heard in their stalls across the dirt road beyond the orchard...Almost all the lights are out in the little village by the waterfall where the mill, so many years ago, used to produce gingham. - [Don Swaim] John Cheever could produce a mood, as you heard. He also had the uncanny knack of drilling into the cruelties and meannesses of well-to-do modern day people, who had only the facade of logic and rationality. I'm Don Swaim. - [Jack Welby] WCBS news time seventeen before two, and Washington house leaders are saying they'll accept the senate approved version of