From John Cheever's "Artemis, the Honest Well-Digger"

 

I decided to do a tour of John Cheever's fiction after finishing Bailey's biography and have been enjoying the Vintage Cheever. One story from that anthology is "Artemis, the Honest Well-Digger." Here is an excerpt:

   

"You mean you've never heard of my husband?" she said. "J. P. Filler. He's a famous author."

    "What did he write?" asked Artemis.

    "well, he wrote a lot of things," she said, "but he's best known for Shit."

    Artemis laughed, Artemis blushed. "What's the name of the book?" he asked.

    "Shit," she said. "That's the name of it. I'm surprised you never heard of it. It sold about half a million copies."

    "You're kidding," Artemis said.

    "No I'm not," she said. "Come with me. I'll show you."

    He followed her out of the kitchen through several rooms, much richer and more comfortable than anything he was familiar with. She took from a shelf a book whose title was Shit. "My God," said Artemis, "how did he come to write a book like that?"

    "Well," she said, "when he was at Syracuse, he got a foundation grant to investigate literary anarchy. He took a year off. That's when we went to Paris. He wanted to write a book about something that concerned everybody, like sex, only by the time he got his grant, everything you could write about sex had been written. Then he got this other idea. After all, it was universal. That's what he said. It concerned everybody. Kings and presidents and sailors at sea. It was just as important as fire, water, earth, and air. Some people think it was not a very delicate subject to write about, but he hates delicacy, and anyhow, considering the books you can buy these days, Shit is practically pure. I'm surprised you never heard about it. It was translated into twelve languages. See" Sje gestured toward a bookcare, where Artemis read Merder, Kaka, and rOBHO, "I can get you a paperback  if you'd like."

    "I'd like to read it," said Artemis.

    She got a paperback from a closet. "It's too bad he isn't here. He would be glad to autograph it for you, but he's in England. He travels a lot."

    "Well, thank you, ma'am," said Artemis. "Thank you for the lunch and the book. I have to get back to work."

    He checked the rig, climbed into the cab, and put down Huxley for J. P. Filler. He read the book with a certain amount of interest, but his incredulity was stubborn ... [he was] trying to comprehend the fact that he lived in a world where a man was wealthy and esteemed for having written a book about turds.

Let me note just two things about this section. One, Cheever never attended even a day of college. In fact, he never finished high school. Two, Cheever took a dim view of the experimental writing that emerged in the late 1960s. He especially disliked the stories that the New Yorker published written by Donald Barthelme. This dislike is partly because he had published many of his own stories in the magazine and thought that Barthelme's work was just not that interesting to read. But this dislike was also because the New Yorker stopped publishing Cheever's stories and publishing experimental postmodern fiction instead. Personally, I think Cheever's work has stood the test of time much more than Barthelme's.