When All the Men Wore Hats

Susan Cheever on the Stories of John Cheever

By: Susan Cheever

Narrated by: Susan Cheever

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.

©2025 Susan Cheever (P)2025 Blackstone Publishing

Clear-eyed portrait

She sees her dad with both clear and loving eyes. And reads it well and clearly.

A great wonderful moving brilliant book.

You don’t want Susan Cheever’s voice to stop. You don’t want the book to end.

A great writer on a great writer

Susan is a great writer with remarkable insight into her father, writing, and humanity. Her analysis of John's stories is eye-opening.

Shameful

I will never again read a John Cheever story with the pleasure I once did. Would John Cheever really want this book, with all of its tawdry and disgusting detail, to be his final epithet? My disgust has zero to do with Cheever’s homosexuality. That means nothing to me. It’s the casual immoral behavior, the drunken debauchery and the gritty sexual detail, none of which I wanted or needed to know. It’s an easy buck, I suppose. He deserved so much better.