Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

We are a family that has always been very close in spirit.

The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

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I first read a John Cheever story in college, “The Country Husband” which remains as funny and weird as possible. I might have learned who Cheever was in the same way as a lot of people, through his weird side-jokes in Seinfeld. But I only can confirm that after the fact. Anyway, even hearing John Cheever read a story is to literally hear the old New England patrician 20th century voice come out with incisive criticism of a world that is clearly fading out. Even […]

Short story review dump (Part III)

Mono no aware by Ken Liu

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

The Hofzinser Club by Michael Chabon

The Baboon War by Nnedi Okorafor

Childfinder by Octavia E. Butler

The Five-Forty-Eight by John Cheever

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Mono no Aware by Ken Liu (5 stars) Mono no aware is a Japanese phrase meaning “the pathos of things”. It’s the bittersweet feeling of sadness at the impermanence of things, a careful blend of appreciation and sadness that nothing can last forever. It’s the phrase I didn’t know that I needed in my life – but I think I do, because I experience it fairly often. I think it’s one of the reasons I love Haruki Murakami’s work so much. There is a delicate […]

Paint me a small railroad station then, ten minutes before dark.

Bullet Park by John Cheever

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It’s interesting given how both omnipresent, but relatively non-famous a lot of John Cheever novels are. His two big novels, The Wapshot Chronicle and The Wapshot Scandal are well-known and one won the Pulitzer, but I have never heard of anyone reading them. In school, I only ever read his short stories. I’ve read three of his novels now, and this is the best of the bunch so far. It’s interesting how many writers definitely, without a doubt, ripped off Cheever, and especially this novel. We are in […]

There is no better place to keep a secret than in an unfinished novel

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The Castle of Crossed Destinies – 2/5 Stars I knew it. I knew I was not going to like this one, and I made it about 20 pages in before I truly understood that the book was going to annoy. That’s a lot of annoying for a book that’s only 120 pages long. So the setup of this novel is that a group of people find themselves holed up in a tavern and unable to speak. This setup, which plays upon especially The Decameron, but […]

This shit about being fearless before death ain’t got no quality. How could you say you were fearless about leaving the party, even in stir—even franks and rice taste good when you’re hungry, even an iron bar feels good to touch, it feels good to sleep.

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This novel is about a prison called “Falconer” and not about a falconer. So it’s not about a boy and his hawk, which I thought was possible, or a metaphor for a loss of center or control in the world ala an allusion to “The Second Coming” by Yeats, which I also thought. Nor does it remind me much of John Cheever’s short fiction, of which I have read a fair amount. Also, I had a student years ago who really liked a John Cheever […]



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