Word: manness
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...flowering of his career, in the 1950s and '60s, John Cheever was, to all appearances, the crown prince of normality. The wife and three children, the faithful retrievers, the rambling old house in Ossining, N.Y. - in all its outward signs, his life was commensurate with his role as the man who was, with John Updike, the esteemed chronicler of the postwar suburbs. But if you came to his fiction expecting sunlit scenes of American life, you were mistaken. Though his work was shot through with the beauty and abundance of the world, of suburban "nights where kings in golden suits...
...lonely boy with no role in life but to peer in at the lighted windows of other people's contentment and vitality." But we get a much fuller and more reliable picture in Blake Bailey's fine new biography Cheever: A Life (Knopf; 770 pages), a portrait of the man drawn judiciously but compellingly and in harrowing detail. (Read TIME's 1964 cover story about John Cheever...
...lesson in how to put a great voice to good use, look to PJ Harvey's A Woman a Man Walked By. In 1992, Harvey debuted much as Maria did, as a young woman from a small town in rural England preceded by reports of otherworldly pipes. Now 39, Harvey's got a catalog of near genius records, largely because she developed a musical and emotional repertoire to go along with her talent. She can throw every punch there...
...Harvey's standards, A Woman a Man Walked By is kind of a lark. You can tell because she let frequent collaborator John Parish write the music (to her lyrics) and play all the instruments; when she's serious, Harvey handles everything save the shrink-wrap. Still, it's an excellent version of an underrated career in miniature...
...Woman a Man Walked By isn't as focused as Harvey's best work, but it's just as charismatic and intense. Harvey moves between characters and feelings--teasing and threatening, seducing and comforting--all with one amazing voice...