“It is the peculiar and original genius of Novelist John Cheever to see his chosen subject—the American middle class entering the second decade of the Affluent Society—as figures in an Ovidian netherworld of demons. Commuterland… is given by Cheever’s fables the dignity of the classical theater.”

Ovid in Ossining, Time Magazine, 27 March 1964.

The alert reader will learn something of creator Matt Weiner’s debt to Cheever, and at the same time the reader can reconsider Mad Men as a fable.

• footnote - by Brenden Dean Kemp

1. counterforce liked this
2. mariellie reblogged this from madmenfootnotes and added:

   “A Local Habitation. Cheever’s art deals less with what is called character and idiosyncrasy than with archetypes:...

3. madmenfootnotes posted this