From Publishers Weekly
The story of how little Academy Chicago Publishing (co-owned by the author and her husband, Jordan Miller) tried to publish the late John Cheever's uncollected short stories, and was blocked from doing so by Cheever's family, is now a familiar part of publishing lore (and law). But it has never been told with the exhaustive yet endlessly fascinating detail to be found here. Miller is partial, of course, but her account has the ring of truth, and there seems no doubt that Academy started out with a valid contract to do what they wanted to do, whether or not the Cheevers had intended it. As editor Franklin Dennis unearthed more and more Cheever material from the New Yorker and elsewhere and the collection became much bigger than had been anticipated, an agent was brought in, lawyers were summoned and the first of a series of costly and exhausting court cases began. This is all described in the liveliest manner by Miller, and anyone who enjoys courtroom repartee will rejoice in it. In the end, the Millers were allowed only a small, token publication, and some judgments were handed down that called much of publishing contract law into question, drawing the angry fire of publishers everywhere. Even worse, Miller points out, were the aspersions cast on the validity and viability of the small presses that make up such an essential part of today's publishing world. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Some might suppose that reading a book about a legal battle over publishing rights to a collection of stories by a deceased author might be like watching paint dry. Not so with Miller's account of the struggle of Academy Chicago, the press she runs with her husband, with the heirs of John Cheever over what was conceived as a nearly 70-story work, The Uncollected Stories of John Cheever. After six and a half years and $400,000 in legal bills (just the Millers'), the book appeared as Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever. Miller's viewpoint is obviously biased, and her occasional low blows (she mentions that the Illinois Supreme Court justice who wrote the decision against her company held a life membership in the National Rifle Association) can make one less sympathetic. Still, she offers important insights into the vagaries of both the publishing industry and the legal system and reminds us that the real David's victory over Goliath was truly a major upset that isn't re-created every day. Recommended for all larger libraries.?Jim G. Burns, Ottumwa P.L., IACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In 1987, Anita and Jordan Miller's publishing house, Academy Chicago, decided to try to publish a volume of uncollected John Cheever stories, and they began by contacting Cheever's wife, Mary, and his son, Ben. What followed was a very long, tortuous path that resulted in litigation, judicial judgments in Chicago and in Westchester County, New York, and a small volume of Cheever stories that Academy Chicago published in 1994 that still leaves many "uncollected." Miller, of course, has a huge ax to grind, and she does it in mind-numbing detail--much of the text is taken from the actual court transcripts. Miller does try to humanize the proceedings by occasionally describing a fine meal or what someone wore, and she has an eagle eye for pointing out the prevarication and misinterpretation she finds in the Cheever family, their counsel, and their editorial advisors. Unfortunately, although it is clear that Miller is trying to state her own case, and supports it well, her book reads more like assembled notes than a story that coheres. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

From Kirkus Reviews
A lawyerly avalanche befalls a well-intentioned small press, Academy Chicago Publishers, for its attempt to issue The Uncollected Stories of John Cheever. Academy Chicagos cofounder Miller tells her side of a precipitous story in clean, minimalis t prose. According to her, what began in 1987 as a modest effort to gather all of Cheevers 68 uncollected stories gradually snowballed into an expensive and humiliating compromise. The result, after 10 years of legal drama: a compilation of merely 13 stor ies; wretched relations with the Cheever family; and noses in the air from many New York City literary arbiters. Dutifully documented in conversations and letters exchanged among Miller, her husband, Jordan, and the Cheevers, their agents, reporters, and attorneys is the heartbreak that comes of putting an idea out there, fighting to pursue it, and then losingbasicallyfor lack of funds. Another source of despair: the insults and professional slander accumulated along the way. Miller reports that the Cheev ers lawyer, Martin Garbus, cheerfully warned writers to beware of small publishers: they might not have much money, and even if they are solvent, he said, there have been troubling cases in which they did not follow standard industry practice in editing, publishing or marketing. As for the Cheevers themselves, their motive in attacking Academy Chicago legally seemed to be acquisitiveness. Confided one of Cheevers offspring, Im a greedy pig. All my life Ive wanted to be rich. Havent you? But formally and publicly, their legal action instead argued that publication of the projected book of short stories would hurt John Cheevers reputation because these stories were poor and alleged, in Millers words, the total incapability of our small press to perform con tractual obligations already entered into. An almost unbelievablethough not unfamiliarstory of a literary enterprise quashed by money and the law. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

How did a volume of 68 short stories by John Cheever - previously published, but never published as a collection - ignite four years of litigation with as many shocking reversals of fortune as a Grisham thriller? Who were the players and what were the real issues behind this precedent-setting case, a poisonous imbroglio lasting from 1988 - 1992 that split the publishing world, ran up million-dollar legal fees, and ended with an Illinois Supreme Court decision that could radically alter how publishers and authors do business everywhere? As only a participant could, Anita Miller leads us through the complicated, contradictory, and often riveting proceedings behind four judicial rulings in state and federal courts.

FROM THE CRITICS

Peter Kurth

In the long and dispiriting tradition of literary cannibalism, few writers have had their bones picked over as thoroughly as the late John Cheever, the "sage of Ossining" and foremost chronicler of American suburban anxiety. Cheever died of cancer in 1982, four years after his selected Stories won him the Pulitzer Prize and gave him a measure of financial security for the first time in his life. Money was forever on Cheever's mind, from the day in 1930 when he sold his first short story to the New Republic for a whopping $87, to the moment he scrawled an "X" on his last will and testament and opened the gates to a decade of litigation over his literary legacy. That Cheever even had a legacy to litigate would probably have surprised him. "I don't anticipate that my work will be read," he declared late in his life. "I might be forgotten tomorrow; it wouldn't disconcert me in the least."

Those it would disconcert, on the evidence of Anita Miller's Uncollecting Cheever, are Cheever's widow, Mary, and his three children, especially the elder two, Susan and Benjamin. Uncollecting Cheever is the blow-by-blow account of the Cheevers' famous legal battle with Academy Chicago, a small Midwestern publishing house owned and run by Miller and her husband, Jordan, who in 1988 hoped to publish a volume of Cheever's previously uncollected short stories. The idea for the book came from Franklin Dennis, a New York book publicist who did work for the Millers and was also a neighbor of the Cheevers in Ossining. Mary Cheever at first agreed to the project, signing a contract and receiving half of a $1,500 token advance for what she later insisted she had envisioned as "a small edition for libraries, for students," and not a major commercial work. Only when Franklin Dennis had unearthed more than 60 Cheever stories from magazines and anthologies, and when paperback rights to the collection were sold for $225,500 in advance of publication, did the Cheevers -- and, for that matter, the Millers -- realize that they might have "a gold mine" on their hands. Mary Cheever tried to break the contract; the Millers responded with a lawsuit to enforce its terms; the Cheevers countered with a suit to protect their copyright, and one of the great literary court battles was born.

Uncollecting Cheever is unabashedly partisan in its retelling of the case, which the Millers eventually lost before the Illinois Supreme Court. The book moves sentence to sentence and page to page in exhaustive declarative terms: "On May 20, Judge Goettel held his hearing into Mrs. Cheever's complaint"; "On Wednesday afternoon, August 3, Paul phoned in great excitement to tell us that Goettel's opinion had come down" -- pausing only for Miller's occasional wry aside and bitter commentary on the power of big publishing houses, big agents and big lawyers against small independent firms. It was "a ridiculous case," Miller concedes, but one that had to be fought. Wandering through her account are the Cheevers themselves, who seem deranged when not strictly mercenary and deceitful, and a variety of literary and legal notables, among them Erica Jong (during her tenure as president of the Authors Guild), killer agent Andrew Wylie and intellectual property lawyer Martin Garbus, all of them taking the Cheevers' part and thus coming in for their share of swipes and jabs. It's hard not to sympathize with the Millers in their predicament, but Uncollecting Cheever would have fared better had it been written by someone not attached to the case. -- Salon

Dave Reid

[Uncollecting Cheever] is a fascinating, well-written, sometimes humorous, though often chilling exploration of the legal storm in which Academy Chicago found itself. . . . Although not a lawyer or a book publisher, I was hooked on this story almost immediately and found it difficult to put the book down. -- ForeWord Magazine

Richard Dooling - The New York Times Book Review

Law students and legislators will learn a lot from Uncollecting Cheever about the mortal perils of careless drafting....[and] will not be surprised to learn that the legal dispute brought out the worst in everyone connected with it....both parties...fought for four years ...in a species of combat that differs from violence only insofar as there is usually no bloodshed in litigation.

Richard Dooling

Law students and legislators will learn a lot from Uncollecting Cheever about the mortal perils of careless drafting....[and] will not be surprised to learn that the legal dispute brought out the worst in everyone connected with it....both parties...fought for four years ...in a species of combat that differs from violence only insofar as there is usually no bloodshed in litigation. -- The New York Times Book Review

Vanessa V. Friedman

...[Miller] begins the book with convincing restraint...[but] ends by taking petty potshots at her opponents. -- Entertainment WeeklyRead all 6 "From The Critics" >

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