“The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.”

The Sixties, 1963 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

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John Cheever36

American novelist and short story writer 1912–1982

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“The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.”

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