a literary analysis of purity in the literature by michel de montaigne In a literary period that witnessed the exhaustion of literature, wholesale formal experimentation, a general distrust of language, the death of the novel, and the blurring of the lines separating fiction and play, mainstream art and the avantgarde, john cheever (may 27, 1912 – june 18, 1982) consistently and eloquently held to the position that.