Falconer (1977) Signed First Edition Reference

Falconer is John Cheever’s literary resurrection — the novel that redeemed his reputation after the failure of Bullet Park, that proved he could write about subjects far outside the suburban territory with which he was identified, and that demonstrated the artistic transformation that sobriety had made possible. Published by Knopf in 1977, the novel was a critical and commercial triumph, debuting on the New York Times bestseller list and earning unanimous praise from reviewers who had given up on Cheever after Bullet Park.

The Novel

The story follows Ezekiel Farragut, a heroin-addicted college professor serving time at Falconer Correctional Facility for the murder of his brother. The prison setting — drawn in part from Cheever’s experience teaching creative writing at Sing Sing — is rendered with a specificity that demolishes any notion of Cheever as merely a poet of the suburbs. The novel addresses addiction, homosexuality, murder, and institutional degradation with the same luminous prose Cheever had previously applied to cocktail parties and swimming pools.

What makes Falconer remarkable is the way Cheever maintains his characteristic lyricism within the brutally confined setting. Farragut’s inner life — his memories of his dysfunctional family, his relationship with a fellow inmate, his struggle against his addiction — is rendered with a precision and beauty that the prison walls cannot diminish. The novel’s ending, in which Farragut escapes concealed in a body bag, achieves a transcendence that some readers find earned and others find sentimental.

The biographical context enriches the novel. Cheever had achieved sobriety in 1975 after decades of alcoholism, and Falconer — written in a burst of newly sober energy — carries the intensity of a man who had been given a second chance and knew it. His own bisexuality, long suppressed and denied, finds its most direct fictional expression in Farragut’s prison love affair.

First Edition Identification

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York Publication date: 1977 Copyright page: “First Edition” stated per Knopf convention Dust jacket: Joan Auclair designed the iconic jacket

Signed Copy Market Values

• Signed first edition, fine/fine: $500–$1,500
• Inscribed copies: $700–$2,500
• Association copies: Premium for connections to the Sing Sing teaching experience or to Cheever’s sobriety circle
• Unsigned first edition, fine/fine: $100–$300

Falconer benefited from Cheever’s active promotion of the book — the literary comeback narrative made him a marketable figure for the first time since the early Wapshot years, and he did extensive readings and signings. As a result, signed copies are more available than for the earlier, less commercially successful novels.

Why This Novel Matters for Collectors

Falconer sits at the intersection of literary quality and biographical drama in a way that few novels do. A signed first edition is not just a book by a great writer — it is a physical artifact of one of the most dramatic comebacks in American literary history. The novel’s publication marked the moment when Cheever stopped being “the Chekhov of the suburbs” and became, simply, one of the essential American novelists of the century.