Story 46: John Cheever - The Enormous Radio
I don't have the time to read in 3s lately so I will upload these piecemeal and compile them later
John Cheever - The Enormous Radio
[Listen to the audio reading here] (https://youtu.be/qh24kv58yJ8?si=HsXrXkx0nJT9o3N7)
A suburban gothic story published in 1947 about a normal married couple whose gigantic new radio broadcasts the sounds from their neighbours' houses, revealing their secrets and private miseries, which get more alarming as the story progresses. The woman gets addicted to listening, and becomes depressed by what she hears (is doomscrolling just human nature?). Her own homelife begins to mirror that of her miserable neighbours, and the story ends with the radio being fixed, yet it broadcasts miserable world events instead.
Moral? Turn off the fucking radio/tv/computer/phone. Go to the library or something.
It is a cleverly constructed story with a ripper few pages at the end. For some reason I associate Cheever with realism, but this story very fantastical and imaginative, similar to my other favourite story by Cheever, The Swimmer - one of my favourite short stories of all time.
I say this after every good story but this makes me want to read more from his collection. (I bought this hardback for a woman I was dating a about 4 years ago, but forgot to bring it, and then quickly after she broke up with me by slagging me off on twitter for some undefined reason and I never got round to finding out why I was slagged off or dumped. I just shrugged).