Closeted, self-hating, alcoholic, miserably married, and a frequent liar, John Cheever escaped by creating a more bucolic WASP suburbia in his beautiful fiction. Not coincidentally his most accomplished novel, Falconer [and Kindle], is the one that deals openly with love between men, (also not coincidentally) imprisoned. His masterpieces are his stories. He slept with everyone from Walker Evans when he was young to Allan Gurganus when he was old. (Read Cheever's memory of the Evans hookup here.) Blake Bailey was awarded a Guggenheim to write his biography, which went on to be a Pulitzer finalist and won the NBCC and the Francis Parkman Prize.