You’re Not Smart Enough To Write!

John Cheever won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1979 for his collection of stories. He also won as well the National Book Critics Circle Awardand the Natinal Medal for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work also has been included in the Library of America. He is considered by many one of the finest short story writers that America has produced.

However, when Cheever attended Thayer Academy as a teenager he was expelled for not studying. Nevertheless, at the age of eighteen, one of his first published work, “Expelled” appeared in The New Republic.

In 1942 when he enlisted in the army he tested low-normal on the government IQ test.  It was the same year that he published his first short-story collection, The Way Some People Live.

So, when someone tells you that you are not smart enough to be a writer, remember John Cheever.