Here is the preface to twelve magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates — with unequaled grace and tenderness — the deepest feelings we have.

As Cheever writes in his preface, "These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat."