I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: November 19, 2013] “Reunions” podcast

In the very first New Yorker fiction podcast, Richard Ford reads a story by John Cheever from 1962.  This is an especially apt pairing because Ford explains that when he does author appearances, he often reads Cheever’s story “Reunion” before reading his own story “Reunion.”  The reason, he explains, is that the Cheever story inspired his own.  [I haven’t read the Ford story although it too appears in the New Yorker, but from the way he describes it, it doesn’t sound like it’s all that similar, just “inspired” by the Cheever piece].

I don’t know a lot of Cheever (which Ford says is a common and sad problem for American readers), but I have always loved his story “The Swimmer,” which I think is fantastic.

“Reunion” (the Cheever story) is very simple and yet it speaks a lot about family. (Both Ford and the New Yorker host talk about how remarkably short (about 1,000 words) and yet how powerfully concise it is.)  In the story, a young man has time to kill between trains in Gran Central Station.  He is en route from school and had about 90 minutes before his next train arrives. So he contacts his father to see about having lunch.  He hasn’t seen his father in about three years and he thinks this will be nice.

His father arrives right on time and boisterously proclaims that they don’t have time to have lunch at his club, so they’ll have to go for lunch around here.

They got to a restaurant where the father loudly calls for the waiter, “Garcon! Cameriere! You!” and ultimately starts clapping his hands until the man shows up.  He orders 2 Beefeater Gibsons, but the waiter is not happy about being treated this way and asks them to leave.  Which the father does willingly.  They go to the next place and have their Beefeaters, but by the end of their first, the father has insulted the waiter and they leave again.  Two more establishments follow with the same amount of rudeness and impatience—and no food to be had.

Finally the son says that he has to go—his train is due.  The father tries to buy a “goddamn” “yellow journalism” paper from a kiosk and can’t even manage to do that without trying to get a rise out of the guy.  The son quietly slips away.

There is so much packed into these few scenes—amazingly, none of which are really all that different.  It’s quite a fantastic story.  (You can read it with a selection of vocabulary words (!) at the end here).

At the end of the story, there’s a brief interview with Ford (this whole podcast is only 12 minutes long) in which he talks about what a great short story writer Cheever was (and that he has written over 130 stories published in the New Yorker).  He says he has read “Reunion” over 300 times.  Which is a little mind boggling.

Ford is a funny interviewee.  He says that the audience really enjoys the Cheever story when he reads it (and they seem to like his story too).  Maybe it’s time to read some more Cheever (and certainly to read Ford’s story “Reunion”).