Falconer by John Cheever

First published: 1977

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: Early 1970’s

Locale: New York

Principal characters

• Ezekiel “Zeke” Farragut, a college professor and heroin addict jailed for murdering his brother
• Marcia Farragut, his wife
• Chicken Number Two, an older career felon who befriends Farragut
• Jody, an inmate, a hustler, and Farragut’s lover

The Story:

When Ezekiel Farragut is escorted, shackled to nine other prisoners, into the grim edifice of Falconer State Correctional Facility to begin serving a twelve-year sentence, he is certain that he will die there. Farragut has been convicted of beating his brother to death with a fireplace poker while high on heroin. A forty-eight-year-old university humanities professor who has struggled throughout his adult life with heroin addiction, Farragut sees incarceration as a long-shot chance for penance and redemption. His life of affluence and privilege now seems distant—he is haunted by dreams of beautiful women on exotic island beaches—and when his wife, Marcia, visits him early on, her chilling distance reminds him that that world is now irrevocably lost to him.

Farragut is on a court-mandated methadone program to ease him off heroin, and his initial days in the prison center on getting his fix. His addiction began in the South Pacific jungles when he was a rifleman during World War II. He would drink entire glasses of codeine cough syrup before going into battle. As a college professor, he would shoot up heroin with his colleagues before classes. Farragut describes his generation as a generation of addicts who, facing the cataclysmic implications of atomic holocaust, opted for either alcohol or drugs as avenues to touch a desperate transcendence. Thus, when two spoons hidden in Farragut’s cell by another inmate are discovered during routine inspection and Farragut faces six days of revoked privileges, his greatest worry is over getting his fix, as he will be unable to go to the infirmary. Far from being sympathetic toward his plight, the guards anticipate watching the withdrawal “show”—indeed, Farragut goes into convulsions, beats his head against the floor, and tries to hang himself. When a guard intervenes and cuts him down, Farragut makes a break for the infirmary, only to have a chair smashed over his head. Recovering, he considers suing the state for denying him his methadone. He uses his bed sheet to write three elaborate letters on his own behalf, one to the governor, one to his bishop, and one to a fantasy lover.

Farragut then meets Jody in the prison showers. Jody, a mortgage banker jailed for robbery, is much younger than the professor. The two become lovers, although both inmates and guards warn Farragut that Jody is a conman who uses people. Predictably, Jody abruptly abandons Farragut to pursue another inmate who secures him the chance to escape. When the archbishop of New York comes to the prison to say Mass and confer degrees on eight inmates who have completed a pilot program in banking, Jody disguises himself as an altar server and simply departs with the bishop’s entourage in a state-provided helicopter. Farragut is devastated to be left alone and realizes the deep impress of love (the alternative is The Valley, an old bathroom in the prison where the inmates go to masturbate with each other).

When a riot in a nearby prison causes Falconer to go under a lockdown, with radio and television privileges denied, Farragut, desperate for connection to the outside world, sets about unsuccessfully to build his own radio receiver. To mollify the inmates and provide a distraction to prevent them from rioting themselves, the facility arranges with the help of a local philanthropist to stage Christmas photos for inmates to send to their families. In the stifling August heat, the prisoners are escorted to an old prison classroom, where, next to a brightly lit Christmas tree and stacks of empty boxes wrapped like gifts, they have their photos taken. After the commotion of the lockdown, Farragut realizes that he no longer needs his methadone fix: He is now “clean.”

An older inmate referred to as Chicken Number Two is dying, but the infirmary is filled with flu patients, so he is moved into Farragut’s cell. Farragut at last shares an account of his crime with his new cell mate. He tells the dying inmate about his brother, a callous man who, even as he busied himself doing philanthropic work through a foundation, ignored significant problems with his wife and his own children. One night, after a particularly brutal dinner, Farragut’s brother, in a moment of vodka-induced anger, told Farragut that their father had tried to convince their mother to abort Farragut. Provoked and high, Farragut struck his brother more than twenty times with a fireplace iron.

After he has shared his story with Chicken Number Two, Farragut comforts the old prisoner while he dies. When the infirmary guards leave the burial bag in the cell until morning, Farragut removes the corpse, places it in his cot, and, grabbing a razor, zippers himself into the bag in its place. Attendants carry him out and, in a stroke of unanticipated luck (the hearse has been delayed while it gets an oil change), Farragut cuts himself out of the bag with the razor, substitutes rocks to mimic his weight, and simply walks away from Falconer. He walks into the nearest city, where he chances upon a stranger at a bus stop. The stranger, who has just been evicted from his apartment and is on his way to live with his sister, takes an interest in Farragut, pays his bus fare, gives him his phone number, and invites him to share an apartment. As Farragut gets off the bus, walking now in a cleansing rain, he feels for the first time the splendid release of joy.

Bibliography

Bailey, Blake. Cheever: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Landmark biography that includes accounts of Cheever’s experiences at Sing Sing and of Falconer’s reception.

Batey, Robert. “Falconer: John Cheever’s Prison Novel.” Legal Studies Forum 25, nos. 3/4 (2001). Indispensable, thorough analysis of the novel’s use of the imagery of jurisprudence and the concept of punishment to explore the inhumanity of imprisonment and to encourage sympathy for the incarcerated.

Bosha, Francis J. The Critical Response to John Cheever. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. An illuminating record of Cheever’s career-long love-hate relationship with the critical press. Includes six reviews of Falconer.

Clemons, Walter. “Cheever’s Triumph.” Newsweek, March 14, 1977, pp. 61-71. Cover story that examines how Falconer significantly altered the perception of Cheever as a writer. Includes a fascinating interview that explores ties between Farragut and Cheever.

Johnson, Glen M. “The Moral Structure of Cheever’s Falconer.” Studies in American Fiction 9 (1981): 21-31. An excellent starting point for approaching the novel. Stresses the evolution of Farragut toward spiritual rejuvenation, sees the prison as a purgatorial environment wherein Farragut works through alienation to genuine communion.

Meanor, Patrick. John Cheever Revisited. New York: Twayne-Macmillan, 1995. Important introduction to Cheever’s fiction, written after Cheever’s death, that sees Falconer within the context of Cheever’s own development and argues that Cheever, at career’s end, was freeing himself from his own private demons by portraying Farragut’s salvation.