You know those things you think everybody knows, but sometimes you're wrong?

We stopped at Goodwill on the way to the hospital to pick up some paperback novels. One never knows how long one will spend waiting in an emergency room, especially when one does not have an emergency. As mysterious is the contents of any given Goodwill on any given day.

I looked through three long shelves of books, past a guide to grooming poodles and several outdated weight-loss schemes posing as cookbooks. I noticed a large number of near-anonymous mid-century hardbacks. I thought briefly about the people who must have written them. Did they think they were making something that would last, or were they all more savvy than that?

I was pleasantly surprised to find a faded copy of The Stories of John Cheever among the books on those dingy shelves, so I snapped it up along with a Virginia Woolf novella and a biography of Merv Griffin circa 1976. Forty-nine cents each. I knew the bio would be good for a laugh, and it was. I haven't started the Woolf, because stories are by far my favorite literary vehicle. I love them.

Too many people see "short" stories as novels, only smaller. That's a wrong approach. Think of a novel as one of those epic historical paintings in which everything is trying to happen before your very eyes. Some of them are very good, but there's a lot going on. In most stories, there's less sheer plot. There's less action, less movement, and for me there's more impact.

So yesterday morning I was reading Cheever when I was set upon by a pack of doctors. I laid my book down on the bed, Dr. Jonsson sat down beside me and picked it up.

"Is this a good book?" he asked. His accent is curious, slightly high pitched and difficult to identify; it simply tells you that he's not from around here. He opened a page and read a story title. "What's it about?" Dr. Jonsson is Icelandic, and I would not expect him to be familiar with Cheever's work.

I told him the stories were about WASPs: Unhappy white men who cheat on their wives and drink more than they should and their unhappy wives who outspend their incomes and drink more than they should. Sometimes unhappy children enter the picture, but not always.

"You mean, White Anglo Saxon Protestants?" asked Dr. Hanaway. She is about my age, and despite having earned an MD, she always strikes me as a very silly girl.

I nodded and repeated the author's name as if to say "remember?"

None of the doctors showed a hint of recognition. I said something like "Hmmm, OK." And we went on with our examination. What I thought was "Didn't any of you attend American high schools? Don't they teach you to read any more?"

Cheever died in 1982. I suppose that should tell me that one can achieve near-total obscurity within 20 years.

before - after