“The Enormous Radio”

I don’t usually like to quote from someone else’s writing but this rang a bell with me. In the April 8, 2010 issue of The New York Review of Books, Edmond White reviewed several books pertaining to John Cheever, a noted short story writer and novelist. White had this to say:

“One of his (Cheever’s) first successful stories, “The Enormous Radio,” is about a young wife in New York who listens to a new radio all day that strangely enough, is tuned in not to broadcasts but to the conversations going on in the adjoining apartments. When her husband comes home one day she’s a wreck. She sobs:

‘They’re all worried about money. Mrs. Hutchinson’s mother is dying of cancer in Florida and they don’t have enough money to send her to the Mayo Clinic. At least, Mr. Hutchinson says they don’t have enough money. And some woman in this building is having an affair with the handyman – with the hideous handyman. It’s too disgusting. And Mrs. Melville has heart trouble and Mr. Hendricks is going to lose his job in April and Mrs. Hendricks is horrid about the whole thing and that girl who plays the “Missouri Waltz” is a whore, a common whore, and the elevator man has tuberculosis and Mr. Osborn has been beating Mrs. Osborn.’

White concludes, “The consoling husband has the radio removed – other people’s stories may be gripping but they can also have such a sad cumulative effect that they make one’s own life impossible to live.”

Cheever, who died in 1982, had no way of knowing that he had perfectly described our current predicament: Between cable news, the Drudge Report, emails and FaceBook we are immersed in the misery of mankind on a constant basis. Running is my only escape, and so I run.

Keep Running!