The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

Published 1979 · 693 pages · 333,138 words · about 25 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is The Stories of John Cheever to read?

The Stories of John Cheever scores 61 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 62 out of 100
Cheever precise vocabulary.
Sentence structure: 62 out of 100
Elegant sentences.
Abstraction: 65 out of 100
Suburbia, longing, morality.
Information density: 58 out of 100
American suburbia.
Narrative indirection: 60 out of 100
Third person, ironic.
Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
Swimmers, suburbs, alcohol.
Ironic distance: 68 out of 100
Cheever irony.
Resolution withholding: 60 out of 100
Stories vary.
Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
Story collection.

How The Stories of John Cheever is regarded

The Stories of John Cheever holds a literary regard score of 69 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

About the author

John Cheever