Literary Jukebox: Art + Design Thinking from Short Fiction
  1. Literary Jukebox: In Short, the World
  2. Canada - John Cheever
  • Literary Jukebox: In Short, the World
    • Italy - Dino Buzzati
    • France - Guy de Maupassant
    • Japan - Hisaye Yamamoto
    • Peru - Ventura Garcia Calderon
    • Russia - Maxim Gorky
    • Egypt - Alifa Rifaat
    • Brazil - Clarice Lispector
    • England - V S Pritchett
    • Russia - Ivan Bunin
    • Czechia - Milan Kundera
    • Sweden - Lars Gustaffsson
    • Canada - John Cheever
    • Ireland - William Trevor
    • USA - Raymond Carver
    • Italy - Primo Levi
    • India - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
    • USA - Carson McCullers
    • Zimbabwe - Petina Gappah
    • Spain-Merce Rodoreda
    • Israel - Etgar Keret

On this page

  • John Cheever
    • Story
  • Themes
  • Additional Material
    • Notes and References
  • Song for the Story !!
  • Writing Prompts
  1. Literary Jukebox: In Short, the World
  2. Canada - John Cheever

Canada - John Cheever

The Enormous Radio

Published

December 28, 2021

Modified

May 5, 2026

John Cheever

Story

We will read Cheever’s dystopian tech story, The Enormous Radio, first published in 1953. It can be found in the collection of short stories titled The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953). It is also available in The Stories of John Cheever (1987).

Download PDF File

Unable to display PDF file. Download instead.

Themes

  • Communications Technology: Boon and Bane
  • “Sweet Old Tech”
  • Uses of Tech, and Used by Tech
  • After Robert Lucky’s New Communications Services –What does Society want?, we can also talk about the following Ancient Human Dreams, and how modern SM platforms seem to make these possible, sometimes in disturbing ways:
    • “We Wish to Be Some-Where We are Not”
    • “We Wish to Be Some-When (Time) We are Not”
    • “We Wish to Be Some-One We are Not”
    • “We Wish to Be Some-Thing We are Not”
  • Forbidden Knowledge
  • Love Thy Neighbour

Additional Material

Download PDF File

Unable to display PDF file. Download instead.

Notes and References

Song for the Story !!

Song: Somebody’s Watching Me
Group: Rockwell and Michael Jackson
Release Date: Pongal / Makara Sankranthi, January 14, 1984

“Somebody’s Watching Me” is a song recorded by American singer Rockwell (Kennedy Gordy), released by the Motown label in 1984, as the lead single from his debut studio album of the same name. Rockwell’s debut single release, the song features guest vocals by brothers Michael Jackson (in the chorus) and Jermaine Jackson (additional backing vocals).

Figure 1: Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” (1984)

Also listen to The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star and Queen - Radio Gaga. And Men at Work - Who can it be now?.

Writing Prompts

  1. On being Average, or being thought to be Average
  2. Am I using [your favourite SM app] or is it using me?
  3. On Human Dreams and Technology. Take inspiration from Robert Lucky’s paper, embedded above. Look especially on the Section VI. therein on Fulfilling Ancient Dreams.
  4. On bugs in internet apps. Take inspiration from Vinton G. Cerf’s famous Internet document in poetry form, RFC968 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc968.
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Sweden - Lars Gustaffsson
Ireland - William Trevor

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