Selling Ben Cheever

In 1995, America was in the throes of downsizing fever. Many thousands then, as now, were losing their jobs to the corporate demand of more money for the top, by tightening the belt below. Unable to sell his latest novel, Ben Cheever started to think about what employment opportunities were out there. Selling Ben Cheever is the frank, self-effacing, and enlightening chronicle of his five years in the service industry. As we watch Ben confront his own demons about what a particular job means to him, we are compelled to consider how our egos are affected by not only what we do, but how we do it. Through his experiences, we begin to think about our approach to our own jobs and to confront our fears about what we would do if we didn't have them.

In 1995, America was in the throes of downsizing fever. Many thousands then, as now, were losing their jobs to the corporate demand of more money for the top, by tightening the belt below. Unable to sell his latest novel, Ben Cheever started to think about what employment opportunities were out there. Selling Ben Cheever is the frank, self-effacing, and enlightening chronicle of his five years in the service industry. As we watch Ben confront his own demons about what a particular job means to him, we are compelled to consider how our egos are affected by not only what we do, but how we do it. Through his experiences, we begin to think about our approach to our own jobs and to confront our fears about what we would do if we didn't have them.

In a deeply personal history of running, the novelist-author of The Plagiarist traces the evolution of the sport from the ancient world to the present day while reflecting on his personal, decades-long devotion to and experiences of the sport.

' It's a bible, and a laugh, for anyone being downsized . a triumph of humanity over circumstance' Irish Times

Arthur Prentice, the son of an aging, alcoholic, much-celebrated American author, embarks on a career with a prestigious magazine and finds himself undertaking an emotional journey that transforms every facet of his life. "An ingenious first novel".--Newsweek.

What would you write if no one knew who you were? In the spirit of the demolition derby, where drivers take heedless risks with reckless abandon, welcome to the first convocation of the Secret Society of Demolition Writers. Here is a one-of-a-kind collection by famous authors writing anonymously–and dangerously. With the usual concerns about reputations and renown cast aside, these twelve daredevils have each contributed an extreme, no-holds-barred unsigned story, each shining as brightly and urgently as hazard lights. Unconventional and unapologetic, this publishing equivalent of a whodunit features an eclectic group of fictional characters, including a delusional schizophrenic narrator, an egg donor with second thoughts about her decision, a pharmacist who forms a weird crush on a woman who beat both of her parents to death, and a little girl who understands that an old safe is the threshold to another, ghostly, world. Equally diverse and surprising are the authors themselves: Aimee Bender, Benjamin Cheever, Michael Connelly, Sebastian Junger, Elizabeth McCracken, Rosie O’Donnell, Chris Offutt, Anna Quindlen, John Burnham Schwartz, Alice Sebold, Lauren Slater, and Marc Parent, the editor of the collection. Never before has such a wide-ranging and talented group of authors been assembled to such explosive and entertaining effect. The Secret Society of Demolition Writers is an intriguing puzzle in itself, but it’s also an important addition to the careers of some of our finest storytellers–even if we never really know who wrote what. Its boundary-smashing fiction offers exhilarating proof that for an artist, withholding your identity can mean gaining your freedom.

John Cheever, novelist, short-story writer, and winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, was a prolific writer of letters, sending as many as thirty in a week. These letters, culled from thousands written to famous writers and celebrities - including John Updike, Josephine Herbst, William Maxwell, Saul Bellow, Hope Lange and Philip Roth - his family, friends, and lovers, paint an intimate and surprising self-portrait that is as vivid as any character Cheever invented. Edited and annotated by his son Benjamin, Cheever's letters trace his development as a writer and as a man. They reveal him to be complex, flawed, and full of contradictions. On display are not just his ambitions and weaknesses, his alcoholism and his cloaked bisexuality, but also the evolution of his wit and style and, most of all, his love of life.

In DRINKING IN AMERICA, bestselling author Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history. This is the often-overlooked story of how alcohol has shaped American events and the American character from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Seen through the lens of alcoholism, American history takes on a vibrancy and a tragedy missing from many earlier accounts. From the drunkenness of the Pilgrims to Prohibition hijinks, drinking has always been a cherished American custom: a way to celebrate and a way to grieve and a way to take the edge off. At many pivotal points in our history-the illegal Mayflower landing at Cape Cod, the enslavement of African Americans, the McCarthy witch hunts, and the Kennedy assassination, to name only a few-alcohol has acted as a catalyst. Some nations drink more than we do, some drink less, but no other nation has been the drunkest in the world as America was in the 1830s only to outlaw drinking entirely a hundred years later. Both a lively history and an unflinching cultural investigation, DRINKING IN AMERICA unveils the volatile ambivalence within one nation's tumultuous affair with alcohol.