Wed 3/4 @ 6:00PM
Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street

When All the Men Wore Hats is a sympathetic and illuminating account of the stories of John Cheever, and the intersecting life and work of the legendary writer John Cheever, as told by his eldest daughter.

The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978, brought together some of the finest short fiction ever written. The collection was honored with the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and it would go on to sell millions of copies and to define the American short story and shape generations of writers. Cheever’s chronicles of modern life both emerged from a distinctly American culture and also created it—inspiring everything from Mad Men to a Raymond Carver story, from rock songs to a Seinfeld episode.

Growing up, Susan Cheever, John Cheever’s eldest child and only daughter, read what he read, heard what he heard, bantered and gossiped with him and her brothers and mother at the dinner table, and later watched her father type on the cheap yellow paper he favored. A daughter much like Susan appears in many of Cheever’s stories and a family much like theirs is at the center of his writing.

In When All the Men Wore Hats, Susan Cheever looks back on her father’s work and seeks to understand the connections between art and life. How did a bit of local gossip, a slice of Greek myth, and a new translation of Madame Bovary somehow become a brilliant gem like “The Country Husband” or “The Swimmer”? In her 1984 book Home Before Dark, published two years after her father’s death, Cheever wrote movingly about her father and the secrets he kept, but here, years later, she tells the story of the remarkable stories themselves, six of which appear in full in the book’s appendix.

Susan Cheever is the author of many books on American history, the most recent of which is Drinking in America: Our Secret History, published in 2015. She is also the author of numerous novels; My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson—His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, a biography of the Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson; and Home Before Dark, a memoir about her father, John Cheever. She has taught at Bennington College and currently teaches at the New School in the MFA program.

 Eliza Griswold, a poet, a translator, and a contributing writer covering religion, politics, and the environment, has been writing for The New Yorker since 2003. Her books include Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church and Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. She is a Ferris Professor at Princeton University, where she directs the Program in Journalism.

This event is co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Program in Journalism and Labyrinth Books.