Goodbye, My Brother: Difference between revisions
CerroFerro (talk | contribs) Add plot |
CerroFerro (talk | contribs) Add publication history |
||
| Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
The story emerges as a struggle between the [[Puritan |puritanical]] outlook held by Lawrence, and the more tolerant and life-affirming values of his mother and siblings.<ref>Coale, 1977 p. 61-63</ref> |
The story emerges as a struggle between the [[Puritan |puritanical]] outlook held by Lawrence, and the more tolerant and life-affirming values of his mother and siblings.<ref>Coale, 1977 p. 61-63</ref> |
||
==Publication History== |
|||
Originally published by [[The New Yorker]] on August 25, 1951, Cheever was emphatic that “Goodbye, My Brother” appear as the leading story in the 1978 collection of his work [[The Stories of John Cheever]], though he acknowledged it violated the chronological framework of the volume.<ref>Meanor, 1995 p. 4: “Cheever himself insisted that “Goodbye, My Brother” appear first in the chronologically arranged [[The Stories of John Cheever]] (1978), even though it post-dated a number of stories in that collection.”</ref> |
|||
== Footnotes == |
== Footnotes == |
||
Revision as of 15:49, 23 November 2022
“Goodbye, My Brother” is a short story by John Cheever, first published in The New Yorker (August 25, 1951), and collected in The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953).[1] The work also appears in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
Plot
"Goodbye, My Brother" records the apparently final reunion of the upper-middle class Pommeroy family at their collectively owned Massachusetts sea-side property.
Two brothers, a sister and their widowed mother are gathered at the summer residence, and though they meet infrequently but retain affectionate bonds with each other. The third and youngest of the brothers, Lawrence, is an acerbic lawyer who has little in common with his siblings and who harshly judges the moral shortcomings of each member of the family.
The story emerges as a struggle between the puritanical outlook held by Lawrence, and the more tolerant and life-affirming values of his mother and siblings.[2]
Publication History
Originally published by The New Yorker on August 25, 1951, Cheever was emphatic that “Goodbye, My Brother” appear as the leading story in the 1978 collection of his work The Stories of John Cheever, though he acknowledged it violated the chronological framework of the volume.[3]
Footnotes
- ^ Bailey, 2009 (1), p. 1025
- ^ Coale, 1977 p. 61-63
- ^ Meanor, 1995 p. 4: “Cheever himself insisted that “Goodbye, My Brother” appear first in the chronologically arranged The Stories of John Cheever (1978), even though it post-dated a number of stories in that collection.”
Sources
- Bailey, Blake. 2009 (1). Notes on Text in John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writing. The Library of America. Pp.1025-1028 ISBN 978-1-59853-034-6
- Bailey, Blake. 2009 (2). Cheever: A Life. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 770 pp. ISBN 978-1-4000-4394-1
- Coale, Samuel. 1977. John Cheever. Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, New York. ISBN 0-8044-6081-7
- Meanor, Patrick. 1995. John Cheever Revisited. Twayne Publishers, New York. ISBN 0-8057-3999-8
- O'Hara, James E. 1989. John Cheever: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne Publishers, Boston Massachusetts. Twayne Studies in Short Fiction no 9. ISBN 0-8057-8310-5
- Waldeland, Lynne. 1979. John Cheever. Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall & Company, Boston, Massachusetts. ISBN 0-8057-7251-0