1934: His tiny room is photographed by Walker Evans, who considers it the epitome of Depression-era squalor. Lives on stale bread, raisins, and buttermilk, while supporting himself after a fashion by synopsizing novels for MGM.

1944-45: Moves with two other couples to a five-floor townhouse at 8 East 92nd Street—an experiment in communal living that goes awry when one of the wives allegedly makes a habit of washing her hair in the kitchen sink.

1946-47: Spends much of summer 1946 at Treetops, the Winternitz estate in New Hampshire, where he learns how to use a scythe (a lifelong consolation) from the gardener, a Latvian communist named Peter Wesul.

1965: In September writes his first short story in over a year, "The Geometry of Love," a surreal tale about an engineer who applies Euclidean theorems to his marital problems and eventually dies because of his wife's cruelties. [William] Maxwell makes a special trip to Ossining to reject the story in person, delicately suggesting that Cheever's drinking is beginning to interfere with his work.