Probably the shortest great story I’ve read, at three pages top to tail. It’s about – as the opening and closing lines tell us – the last time a boy saw his father. The father is appalling in a comic way, and the story is rich in horrible dialogue that might even have been as much fun to write as it is to read. (I read it aloud to my son recently, though I think I enjoyed the experience more than he did. Another bad father.) But also the story and the central character of the father exemplify Cheever’s own dual nature – his need for respectability and his desire to subvert – which gives the story an undertow of deep poignancy, below the undoubted entertainment and horror value.
First published in the New Yorker, 20 Oct 1962, where it can be read online, and subsequently in the collection The Brigadier and the Golf Widow, Gollancz, 1965, and The Stories of John Cheever, Cape, 1979
A Personal Anthology 