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Angela Allen/Books
The evolution of two American dreams
I
John Cheever's swansong to
the literary world, “Oh What a
Paradise It Seems," is nothing
short of his finest work
| It's difficult to review this slim
novel without some sadness
and regret Cheever died of
cancer this summer on the edge
of his 70th birthday He has
published four novels and seven
collections of short stories dur
ing the past four decades Most
recently, "The Stories of John
Cheever" won the Pulitzer Prize
for Literature in 1978
"Paradise” is a rather simple
story of Lemuel Sears, "an old
man not yet infirm," who disc
overs that the lovely pond on
which he has ice skated for
some years is being poisoned
Some shady Italians have
converted it to a dump, and the
community is going along with
the scam. Outraged and
repelled. Sears makes it his
mission to investigate He
eventually sees the pond clean
again
At the same time Sears falls in
love with Renee, a rather
mysterious woman They pur
sue an unusually erotic
relationship at odd hours and
places In the end, she dumps
him heartlessly Sears, through
fortuitous timing, then takes up
“Oh What a Paradise It
Seems”
By John Cheever
Alfred A. Knopf, 1982
100 pages, $10.00
with Renee's elevator operator,
Eduardo By this time, the mu
tual pollution ot Beasley's Pond
and Lemuel Sears is apparent,
and the two stories become
one
But with dignity and grace,
Sears overrides his despair of
ugliness and cheapness (fried
food, bank machines, Buy Brite
shopping centers) through his
celebration and salvation of
beauty
Cheever achieves this
resolution through his mastery
of simple symbolism His fic
tional world contains obvious
evil and obvious good: there are
no grey areas to explain, just the
human spirit to make sense of
them
Through Sears, Cheever
offers us a beautifully tempered
look at despair while still
bargaining for affirmation:
It was that most powerful
sense of being alive on the
planet.
"The Cinderella Complex”
By Colette Dowling
Summit Books, 1981
266 pages, $12.95
Women are apparently
experiencing some dangerous
fallout from their modest femin
ist dreams of the '60s and ’70s:
nothing’s turning out right.
They're still underpaid,
unappreciated and expendable
in the "adult world.''
The goals were substantial —
gaining the "freedom’’ to
choose to be wife, worker or
both But making emotional and
practical sense out of this
independence appears to be an
even taller order
So says Colette Dowling She
updates the feminist struggle
and follows it through the last 25
years with a critical, if slightly
self-righteous eye
Face it, she argues, women
have come a long way but
haven’t gotten anywhere They
ve been sabatoging their own
ability to be self-reliant Nursing
the same fairy tale that made
Cinderella famous, they still wait
in the wings for the Prince,
dingy grey though he may be, to
arrive and deliver them from
drudgery and responsibility
Unfortunately , dependancy is
not a male conspiracy.
Even though Dowling notes
that 80 percent of the working
female population brings home
a lean share of the bacon (less
than $10,000 a year), she dotes
on the fortunate woman —
bright and educated but
frustrated She has a tendency
to look at women from old-order
standards — what you do and
how much you make define
what you are Women are aware
that their deplorable financial
status perpetuates their low
self-image, but their emotions
haven't caught up enough to let
them fundamentally change
things
Though this isn’t particularly
new stuff, Dowling does look at
it from a pragmatic view
Women have to believe that
what they do, say and think has
both social and emotional value
She calls this "springing free ”
If women "spring" right (push
button freedom?), they'll land
on their own two feet and avoid
another empty ritual.
If she’s not recycling myths,
she may be sprucing up cliches
Nonetheless, Dowling writes
clearly, sincerely and from
experience
Certainly emotional health is a
respectable goal, and certainly
Dowling deserves to be read
Working toward a more egalita
rian community where both men
and women can reach around
each others' limitations may be
a more noble effort. Men are
having a hard time too But we ll
leave that problem to Dowling to
tackle in her next book With her
born-again autonomy, this time
for real, she ought to be
cranking them off the press
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