This is an interesting novel and about a subject that isn't written about too often..it takes place within the confines of a prison and there's a great deal of characterization of the prisoners and their stories as well as the philosophical thinking of the protagonist, who perhaps accidentally killed his brother and his addicted to methadone. There's some ideas of prisoner's rights as well as memories, a homosexual love affair, a clergy visit, and even a little of revolution but it leaves you with a very strange idecipherable sort of feeling throughout, including the ending, which I feel could be taken either as a literal closure or a metaphorical one. In any case, wither when it was written in the 70s or in our present time, there aren't many authors that are really exploring the humanity of prisoners including the qualities and the flaws as well as somewhat the prison guards themselves (though more on the prisoners). Cheever brings a certain quality to the novel in terms of the way they speak and their own life histories they seem to be desperate to tell, even to the point of bribes. I think this novel is worth reading but even more so I feel it is worth pondering because we often think of criminals in a much different way and, though this novel is only a little over 200 pages, Cheever seems to take his time developing the storyline around characters that are too easily overlooked and forgotten, and again not often the focus of the vast majority of novels. Memorable quotes: pg. 38 "Loneliness taught the intransigent to love their cats as loneliness can change anything on earth."pg. 51 Farragut, lying on his cot thinking of the morning and his possible death, thought that the dead, compared to the imprisoned, would have some advantages. The dead would at least have panoramic memories and regrets, while he, as a prisoner, found his memories of the shining world to be broken, intermittent and dependent on chance smells-grass, shoe leather, the odor of piped water in the showers. He possessed some memories, but they were eclipsed and indisposed. Waling in the morning, he cast wildly and desperately around for a word, a metaphor, a touch or smell that would grant him bearing...pg. 80 "It was a very heavy and beautiful snow that, like some juxtaposition of gravity, seemed to set the mountain range free of the planet."pg. 188 "I wouldn't be able to speak to you softly and with patience at this point if I did not believe that mathematics and geometry are a lying and a faulty analogy for the human disposition. When one finds in men's nature, as I do in yours, some convexity, it is a mistake to expect a corresponding concavity. Thiere is no such thing as an iscosceles man."pg. 200 "...so I figure I must come into this life with the memries of some other life and so it stands taht I'll be going into something else and, you know what, Zeke, you know what, I can hadly wait to see what it's going to be like..."pg. 207 "Had he raised his head, he would have seen a good deal of velocity and confusion as the clouds hurried past the face of a nearly full moon.."pg. 208 "I got plenty of money. I been evicted because I'm a human being, that's why.
How much context should we bring to a novel? Should we consider the writer's other works? Should the author's biography inform the reading of a particular novel?I would like to read a book independent of its context. While the text may have an historical context that comes from without, what we should care about is within the text. Yet, when I read John Cheever's Falconer I couldn't help but consider the author's other work. The novel is so different from what I think of as John Cheever.The novel centers on an upper-middle-class heroin in Falconer prison for murdering his brother. Other than the upper-middle-class part, there is little in common with the characters that inhabit most of Cheever's writing. But it goes beyond the setting and the protagonist. The writing itself is loose, casual, colored with flourishes. At times it is brutal, infused with violence and obscenity, and at others it is dreamlike, fantastical.Falconer is not a suburban novel. It is a prison novel, filled with the things that make up prison life. Shocking, naturally, but even more shocking in contrast to Cheever's other work. At the same time, it never feels like the other is trying to shock us. He doesn't show us the violence and sex in order to make us gasp about the awfulness of it or to prove that he can shock. Falconer is given to us from the point of view of a character who has, in a way, given up. He is not shocked by what comes his way. Not resigned, but not amused. He doesn't completely accept his fate, but his attempts at change are only derived from desperation. Even when he experiences strong emotion, he seems to be documenting it in order to make it true. At the novel's ending, he has gone through change and maybe we can believe that he is capable of the emotion he describes, but he is so over the top that we can help but doubt him.In all, context or not, more like Denis Johnson than John Cheever, the novel was a good read.
What do You think about Falconer (1992)?
“Falconer”, escrito em 1977, é o último romance de John Cheever e por muitos considerado a sua obra-prima.É um livro tão duro quanto belo, límpido na sua crueza, humano e impiedoso.Parece-me revelador o que a filha de John Cheever, Susan Cheever, afirma sobre a fase final da vida do pai, fase esta que coincide com a escrita de “Falconer”: "For me, the end of his life is triumphant. He stops drinking. He writes what I think is his best book [Falconer, a novel about a drug addict, serving time for the murder of his brother, who has an affair with another prisoner ]. He became the man he meant to be."Com “Falconer” John Cheever redime-se.
—Carla
There is something both unsettling and beautiful about this compact Cheever novel. A novel of punishment and redemption, Falconer is also a story of addiction, of confinement, of an introspective man moving from his isolated past to his very human present. It is hard to compare Cheever's style to anyone, but there were moments where I felt I was floating in the same literary river as O'Connor, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Percy. His prose is amazing, his imagination is sharp, and the depth of his soul-searching is absolutely sublime.
—Darwin8u
tI read this book as part of my “A Lifetime of Books Challenge”. It’s not a book I normally would have chosen to read; but, it had a lot of good reviews. At first I had a hard time getting into the story. It is about a man, Ezekiel Farragut, convicted of murdering his brother and sentenced to time in prison. The prison is Falconer. He is a middle-class worker; a salesman. He also is a drug addict, stemming from his time in the army. The book takes you through his time in prison with flashbacks to previous moments in his life. It is a book of the times, meaning that it dealt with a lot of the political/social upheavals from the late 60’s to early 70’s. It examines the mind of Farragut and his relationships with almost everyone in his life; both in and outside of prison. I actually found the story quite interesting and was kind of sad when I finished the final page, wanting to know what would transpire next.
—Patrice
