"When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places"
About this Quote
A whole family reduced to a vanishing point: shoulders turning, doors shutting, the stubborn choreography of departure. Cheever’s line is funny in the way a good wound can be funny - brisk, clean, and immediately telling. “Their backs” isn’t just a visual detail; it’s a verdict. He remembers them not by faces (intimacy, dialogue, warmth) but by the part of the body that refuses reciprocity. The family becomes a collection of exits.
The adverb “indignantly” does heavy lifting. Indignation is moral heat that doesn’t necessarily require moral clarity. It suggests people who can’t simply leave; they must leave as a performance of being wronged. That performance is a kind of currency in Cheever’s world: the suburban, status-anxious America where grievance doubles as self-definition. If you can’t be admired, you can at least be offended. The backs are turned not only on “places” but on compromises, on discomfort, on any social scene that fails to mirror their sense of entitlement.
Cheever, chronicler of cocktails and quiet despair, understands how families transmit style as much as values. Here, the inheritance is a reflex: flight as character. It hints at a household where conflict is unresolved because resolution would require staying, explaining, risking embarrassment. Remembering them as perpetual leavers also reads as a child’s ledger of abandonment - the repeated lesson that connection is conditional and easily revoked. The line lands because it’s both precise and merciless: an autobiography of intimacy told through exits.
The adverb “indignantly” does heavy lifting. Indignation is moral heat that doesn’t necessarily require moral clarity. It suggests people who can’t simply leave; they must leave as a performance of being wronged. That performance is a kind of currency in Cheever’s world: the suburban, status-anxious America where grievance doubles as self-definition. If you can’t be admired, you can at least be offended. The backs are turned not only on “places” but on compromises, on discomfort, on any social scene that fails to mirror their sense of entitlement.
Cheever, chronicler of cocktails and quiet despair, understands how families transmit style as much as values. Here, the inheritance is a reflex: flight as character. It hints at a household where conflict is unresolved because resolution would require staying, explaining, risking embarrassment. Remembering them as perpetual leavers also reads as a child’s ledger of abandonment - the repeated lesson that connection is conditional and easily revoked. The line lands because it’s both precise and merciless: an autobiography of intimacy told through exits.
Quote Details
| Topic | Family |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by John
Add to List
