TIME Thursday, Mar. 26, 2009
60. Darkness Visible
By Richard Lacayo
Despite his successes, Cheever feared being a 'dirty fraud.'

60-1-290
In the first great flowering of his career, in the 1950s and '60s, John Cheever was, to all appearances, the crown prince of normality. The wife and three children, the faithful retrievers, the rambling old house in Ossining, N.Y. in all its outward signs, his life was commensurate with his role as the man who was, with John Updike, the esteemed chronicler of the postwar suburbs. But if you came to his fiction expecting sunlit scenes of American life, you were mistaken. Though his work was shot through with the beauty and abundance of the world, of suburban 'nights where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains,' there was also failure and weakness at every turn. The men were poorly equipped for lifethe women were treacherouschildren died.
So it wasn't entirely surprising to discover, after his death at age 70 in 1982, that for much of his life Cheever was miserable, a petulant, belittling husbanda difficult fatherand a severe alcoholic tormented by his secret bisexuality. We learned a lot about this from his journals, 400 pages of lyric abjection published eight years after his death, in which he fears becoming the 'lonely boy with no role in life but to peer in at the lighted windows of other people's contentment and vitality.' But we get a much fuller and more reliable picture in Blake Bailey's fine new biography Cheever: A Life (Knopf770 pages), a portrait of the man drawn judiciously but compellingly and in harrowing detail.

A. 어휘
fraud 사기, 사기꾼. flowering 開花(개화).
to all appearances 外見上(외견상) 모든 면에서. crown prince 황태자.
normality 정상임. faithful 충실한. retrievers 리트리브(사냥개의 일종), 회복자.
rambling 어슬렁거리는, (집 따위가) 사방으로 불규칙하게 늘어난.
the rambling old house (증축에 의해서) 꼴사납게 늘어난 낡은 집.
commensurate 같은 정도의. John Updike 미국의 소설가.
esteemed 존중받는, 높이 평가받고 있는. chronicler 年代記(연대기)작가, 기록자.
sunlit scenes 볕이 드는 장면(밝고 명랑한 장면). shoot 촬영하다, 표현하다.
abundance 풍요. golden suits 황금의 옷, 화려한 복장.
at every turn 到處(도처)에. treacherous 반역하는, 불충실한, 믿을 수 없는.
miserable 비참한. petulant 화를 잘 내는, 성급한, 성미가 까다로운.
belittling 작게 하는, 헐뜯는. severe 심한, 가혹한. alcoholic 알코올 중독자.
torment 고통을 주다, 고문하다. bisexuality 兩性愛(양성애). journal 日記(일기).
lyric 抒情(서정)적인, 抒情詩(서정시). abjection 卑劣(비열), 卑屈(비굴).
peer in 뚫어지게 보다. contentment 만족. vitality 활력. reliable 믿을 수 있는.
judiciously 思慮(사려)깊게, 현명하게. compellingly 마음을 끄는.
harrowing 가슴이 찢어질 듯한, 마음 아픈.

B. 구문
- the crown prince of normality.
[일상의 왕자(매우 정상적인 인물)]
- the esteemed chronicler of the postwar suburbs
[戰後(전후)(二次大戰)에 풍요한 삶을 누리고 있는 郊外(교외)지역의 삶을 연대기작가처럼 정밀하게 묘사한 작가]

60-2-291
Cheever grew up in the Greater Boston shore town of Quincy. His father was a traveling shoe salesman successful enough for a while to keep his family in middling Yankee splendor a big house, good schools for John and his older brother Fred. But by the mid-1920s, as Cheever reached his teens, the shoe business was tanking, and his father was increasingly drunk and adrift. To make ends meet, his mother opened a gift shop that Cheever would describe as 'an abysmal humiliation,' at least for him. The big house would be lost anywayhis mother would shed her feckless husband and eventually drink herself to death a motif in the family story.
When Cheever flunked out of Thayer Academy at 17, it was the end of his formal education. He promptly fictionalized the experience into a story that was purchased by the New Republic. One year a dropout, the next a published writer and within a decade, a fixture in the pages of the New Yorker. By the mid-'60s the prizes and (sometimes) money were also rolling in from his first two novels. But by that time, on most mornings he was scuttling to the liquor cabinet right after breakfast to 'scoop' the day's first gin.

A. 어휘
middling (등급 따위가) 중간의, 보통의. Yankee 미국인, 미국의 북부 사람, 미국의.
splendor 화려함, 빛남. tanking 침체하다. increasingly 점점 더.
adrift 어찌할 바를 모르는, 표류하는. abysmal 深淵(심연)의, 끝이 없는 깊이의.
humiliation 수치, 굴욕.
shed-shed-shed 포기하다, 잎을 떨어뜨리다, (피, 눈물을)흘리다.
feckless 무기력한, 무능한. flunk 퇴학하다, 실패하다. academy 사립의 중고등학교.
promptly 즉시. fictionalize 소설화하다. dropout 중도 퇴학자.
the New Republic 雜誌社(잡지사) 이름. cf. republic 공화국.
fixture 고정 寄稿家(기고가). the New Yorker 신문사 이름.
scuttle 서둘러 가다. liquor 알코올 음료, 술. cabinet 진열장, 작은 방.
scoop 퍼내다. gin 무색의 증류주

B. 구문
- To make ends meet
[수입과 지출을 맞추다]