In the Alcoholic Sense

Carver and Cheever found themselves teaching together for the fall semester at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. This was in 1973, when each was at his peak – not of writing, but of drinking. Whose bright idea was this?

“I used to feel that the classical libation was very much part of life,” Cheever said later. “I drank very happily until I found that I was an alcoholic. I never wrote when I had been drinking. But then there were fewer and fewer days that I could write.”

It's perfectly possible that there were no writing days at all in the fall of 1973. The writers met their classes, Carver says, “in a manner of speaking,” but neither removed the cover on his typewriter.

The introduction was auspicious, in the alcoholic sense: Cheever (“a pleasant little man in a tweed jacket, flannel trousers, and penny loafers”) arrived at the door to Carver’s room holding out a glass, saying, “Pardon me. I’m John Cheever. Could I borrow some Scotch?”

When in residence, they drank mainly in Cheever’s room, because Cheever was afraid of getting mugged in the hallway.

Cheever didn’t have a car, so Carver took him to the state-run liquor store twice a week. Cheever noted in his journal that Carver was “a very kind man,” perhaps for this very reason.

A tire on Carver’s car had an “aneurism,” and once they drove on a flat tire.

Another day, a cold one, Carver found Cheever pacing in the lobby well before they had arranged to meet, wearing loafers without socks. They got to the store as “the clerk was just unlocking the front door [and] John got out of the front door before I could get it properly parked. By the time I got inside the store, he was already at the checkout stand with a half-gallon of Scotch.”

Carol Sklenicka, a biographer of Carver’s, notes, “The Carver-Cheever trips to the liquor store seem to be the most vivid image others have of those two together.” This makes sense, in the alcoholic sense of sense.