Cheever on loneliness

Quite real – that edge of a hotel bed description. Reading John Cheever’s way with and writing on loneliness felt as though hot sun on a snowy trail. Spent a week in a hotel. Besides required work to be done, time turned into a space between mountains where one descends and keeps descending for days at length.

‘A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey’s gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.’