Falconer (novel) - Misplaced Pages

1977 novel by John Cheever This article is about the John Cheever novel. For the Mary Shelley novel, see Falkner (novel).

Falconer
First edition cover (Knopf) Cover design by R. D. Scudellari
Author	John Cheever
Language	English
Publisher	Knopf
Publication date	1977
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages	211
ISBN	0394410718

Falconer is a 1977 novel by American writer John Cheever. It tells the story of Ezekiel Farragut, a university professor and drug addict who is serving time in Falconer State Prison for the murder of his brother. Farragut struggles to retain his humanity in the prison environment, and begins an affair with a fellow prisoner.

Reception

Kirkus Reviews called Cheever's prose "an amazingly flexible instrument" and summarized the novel as "a strong fix—a statement of the human condition, a parable of salvation." Reviewing the book in 1977 for The New York Times, Joan Didion wrote, "On its surface Falconer seems at first to be a conventional novel of crime and punishment and redemption—a story about a man who kills his brother, goes to prison for it and escapes, changed for the better—and yet the 'crime' in this novel bears no more relation to the 'punishment' than the punishment bears to the redemption. The surface here glitters and deceives. Causes and effects run deeper."

Time magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005.

Adaptations

In 2009, Audible produced an audio version of Falconer, narrated by Jay Snyder, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.

In popular culture

In the episode "The Cheever Letters" of Seinfeld, it transpires that the father of Susan Ross had a passionate love affair with John Cheever, to the embarrassment of his wife and daughter. At the end of the episode, George is shown reading Falconer.

References

"Adams". November 22, 2007 – via Flickr.
Towers, Robert (March 17, 1977). "Up the River". The New York Review of Books.
Muske-Dukes, Carol (August 13, 2013). "John Cheever at Sing Sing". The New Yorker.
"The Falconer". Kirkus Reviews. March 1, 1977.
Didion, Joan (March 6, 1977). "Falconer". The New York Times.
Lacayo, Richard (January 7, 2010). "All-Time 100 Novels: Falconer". Time. Retrieved December 9, 2016.

External links

In Review by Dave Latham Archived April 22, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
Slate. "A Story in Every Cell"

v t e John Cheever
Novels	The Wapshot Chronicle (1957) The Wapshot Scandal (1964) Bullet Park (1969) Falconer (1977) Oh What a Paradise It Seems (1982)
Short story collections	The Way Some People Live (1943) The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953) The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories (1958) Some People, Places, and Things That Will Not Appear in My Next Novel (1961) The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964) The World of Apples (1973) The Stories of John Cheever (1978) Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever (1994)
Short stories	"Expelled" (1930) "Fall River" (1931) "Late Gathering" (1931) "The Brothers" (1937) "Publick House" (1941) "The Enormous Radio" (1947) "Torch Song" (1947) "The Hartleys" (1949) "Goodbye, My Brother" (1951) "O Youth and Beauty!" (1953) "The Five-Forty-Eight" (1954) "The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well" (1954) "The Country Husband" (1954) "The Wrysons" (1958) "The Scarlet Moving Van" (1959) "The Music Teacher" (1959) "The Seaside Houses" (1961) "Reunion" (1962) "The Swimmer" (1964) "The Geometry of Love" (1966) "The World of Apples" (1966) "The Fourth Alarm (1970) "Artemis, the Honest Well-Digger" (1972)
Adaptations	"The Country Husband" (Playhouse 90) (1956) The Swimmer (1968) The Five Forty-Eight (1979) Parc (2008)

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