This is easy to recommend. Cheever writes wonderfully: the sentences are strong and intelligible, the plot is engaging and meaningful, and there's a justice to it all. Cheever is not afraid to expose absurdity, but the book is never a farce. There are no cheap shots.
This scratches both highbrow and middlebrow itches. There are plenty of surprising and inventive turns, but never at the cost of serving the reader. Many readers would appreciate the short, digestible chapters.
I cannot imagine an LLM ever writing a book like this. "I cannot imagine" is not the same as "it is impossible," but still.
John Cheever was famous enough to be the core of an episode of Seinfeld, which perhaps 30 million people would have watched live.
The Wapshot Chronicles is great in addressing worries that (then-)contemporary life would not accommodate masculinity. I would not have expected a book from 1957 to be so useful and relevant in this respect.