John Cheeve's perhaps most famous story 'The Swimmer' reminds me of James Joyce's 'The Dubliners', a bunch stories that portray everyday lives in Dublin but that don't allow the reader to be always sure about what is happening. 'The Swimmer' is just like that, you're given a discrete description of life in the middle and middle upper classes of American Society with what seems a charming story about a man who just decides to swim home, but as you're reading (and specially near the end of the story), you stop being so sure about the story... 'The Swimmer' is supposed to happen on a single afternoon, but sometimes it seems that the story looses any sense of time. Plus, it is said to be summer, but sometimes the weather behaves as if Neddy was in an autumn-winter afternoon. Moreover, he keeps wondering if his mind has suppress bad memories that make him suffer and he's hiding facts of his life to us! I mean, at first we could think he's a respected upper class man, a social man who's loved by his neighbors and friends, but then it happens that he's a poor broke man that has got little or none respect of his neighbors. Then, when Neddy finally arrives home he encounters an empty and rusty house without his girls and Lucinda in a sort of dream-like or even surrealist atmosphere that I'm sure thrills anyone that reads 'The Swimmer'.
The society portrayed in 'The Swimmer' as I've mentioned a couple of times before is probably a society that just wants a break, a break from the war, a break from their problems, a break from everything that causes them pain... that's why they "drink too much", and they throw up big and unnecessary parties. It's a damaged America what we're seeing (even if they win, I'm pretty sure no one was really satisfied with the postwar period).
I guess I'll never be sure about what happened to Neddy's life or how the story ends up making sense, but I just can say that I loved this story! It is certainly and exemplary plot that leaves the reader thinking about it for a long time! *Hats off to John Cheever*
I'm glad you liked the story! Very sharp of you to notice the deliberate confusion of seasons. Cheever pushes his Realism in the direction of Magic Realism or Surrealism, most definitely.
ReplyDeleteYou would not think that this is a story that could be successfully filmed, but in fact, the husband and wife team of Eleanor and Frank Perry made an incredible version of it that was released in 1968. Burt Lancaster is amazing in the lead role.