For those who love the stories, the shrinking readership is what’s most regrettable. By turns lyrical and satirical, funny and heartrending, they show us a paradise of sorts, a dream America—and then reveal terrible depths of discontent. His own estimation of his fiction, as recorded in the Journals, is itself a hyper-condensed Cheever story: “flighty, eccentric, and sometimes bitter work, with its social disenchantments, somersaults, and sudden rains.”