In 1975, admitted to an institution for inveterate alcoholics, John Cheever alarmed and scandalised the staff by what they called inappropriate laughter:

‘Why are you laughing?’ they demanded again and again, as Cheever tittered at some grindingly miserable memory from his youth, or some cruelty he’d inflicted on his children.

What his keepers were pathologising was the writer’s genius to see the hilarious in the chaotic, the respectable, the insulting and the desperate. Cheever was, above all, extremely funny, and he has been served now by a marvellous biography which, through it all, manages to keep its sense of humour.