Thoughts on The Swimmer by John Cheever

‘What had become of the constellations of midsummer?’

This was my first encounter with Cheever, often referred to as the Chekhov of the Suburbs. Whilst I'm not sure he warrants that moniker (I haven't read enough of him), there was a lot in The Swimmer that I thoroughly enjoyed, and not in the way I usually enjoy short stories.

If you've ever fancied getting into short stories but don't know where to start, this is the home for you. We read and analyse two stories per month, ranging from the classics to tales that deserve more praise.

Spoilers from here on out - there's always time to read the tale if you want the full experience.

About

An upper-middle class man, Neddy, decides to take an eight-mile walk home, stopping at every swimming pool along the way to take a swim. He names this trip the Lucinda River after his wife who is with him at the first pool when he begins this strange journey.

The journey starts off in high spirits but quickly descends into storms and his warped, resistant memory comes more and more into play. This leaves us asking what is wrong with him, what has really happened as he ages before our very eyes into a pathetic image of a man.

Then he makes it home. His wife and four daughters are gone. The house is locked up and he has no way of getting in. As readers, we're left to wonder what happened. Where did they go? What is he denying? What did he do?

It plays nicely against Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper which we read last time. We could sum up Gilman's classic as woman descends into madness which is the fault of the husband. The Swimmer can be summed up as man gets everything he wants, wants more, acts frivolous, loses everything.

This story breaks one of my rules

I've always held to the rule that I need to enjoy the story the first time round to give it any further thought or attention. In fact, I'm usually pretty ruthless. I'll give up on a story early on if I'm not completely enwrapped in it.

Life's too short for bad stories!

When I finished The Swimmer the first time round, I wasn't sure what to think. Whilst it was an interesting read, I didn't fully appreciate the turn of the story. I felt I'd missed something. And so, I jotted down that I rated it three out of five and didn't get the hype (this story is often ranked as one of the best ever written). I planned not to come back to it.

And yet…

It wouldn't leave me alone. Weeks after reading it, I kept on trying to chew over what the story was really about and what it was trying to say. Why was I still thinking about it all this time later?

This is a true example of a story that I needed to read over and over to get the full experience. It made me ask what the purpose of a short story is.

Is it every story's job to be loved on first read?

From spry to broken

What makes this story so effective is the sudden turn in Neddy's fortunes as he makes his way down the 'Lucinda River'.

He might have been compared to a summer's day, particularly the last hours of one.

When we're introduced to him, he's clearly middle-aged, yet he's bouncy, smacking the bottoms of statues, in good spirits. And I mean that both ways. His soul is high and he's enjoying the moment, but he's also got a glass of gin in one hand, his other hand in the perfect green water of the Westerhazy's pool.

The sentiment I drank too much is voiced four times in the opening paragraph from various characters. Cheever immediately places our focus on this type of lifestyle.

It all seemed to flow into his chest.

We're perfectly placed in the story as Cheever shows us what life is like in the suburbs. Don't we all drink too much? Don't we all have pools we can lounge around to restore ourselves? Don't we all have servers?

And so, we're introduced to a lifestyle not many of us experience that places a cold distance between ourselves and the character (at least my working-class upbringing does!).

It's unclear whether this was on purpose or not. Cheever isn't trying to win our favour and have us bleed with the main character, our rambunctious Neddy.

He was determinedly original and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure.

And so, with the perfect summer's day (we'll come back to the seasons later) in his lungs, he begins his trek home via the pools of the neighbourhood.

He had an inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools.

He gets to his second stop after he leaves his wife and the Westerhazys to their hangovers. Here, Mrs Graham throws at us the first seeds that all is not what it seems.

"Why, Neddy, what a marvelous surprise. I've been trying to get you on the phone all morning."

Instead of engaging in any conversation, he dips into the pool and makes a hasty escape to his next stop on the Lucinda River. He splashes through a few pools where the homeowners don't notice or aren't home and comes to the Bunkers' pool.

The water refracted the sound of voices and laughter and seemed to suspend it in midair.

There are a few such mentions of sound doing funny, almost dream-like things throughout the tale as we get deeper into his travels. It serves well to give it that extra surreal, floaty feeling - something's not quite right here, we feel it more and more as we read on.

The Bunkers have a party in full swing and Neddy goes about kissing people and shaking hands. As he makes his getaway after a length in the Bunkers' pool, he makes his getaway, hears the brilliant, watery sound of voices fading.

He makes it to the Levys' house which is where this story takes a cold turn. He's at exactly the halfway mark in his eight-mile journey. He feels tired, clean, and pleased at that moment to be alone (the Levys aren't there).

It would storm.

The clouds are gathering. The birds change their tune around him. Then the heavens open and the rain and wind pelt everything. It's a rather short but rather extreme storm. He stays under the Levys' gazebo until it passes. And the world around him has moved on. He shivers in the cooled air. Red and yellow leaves have been blasted from the trees all around in a sudden autumn.

When he goes to the next houses, his memory is unclear. He can't remember what one neighbour did with their horses, can't remember one friend having surgery. He gets to the Welchers' and the pool is dry, which he is bitterly disappointed by.

Was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the repression of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of the truth?

With this sentence, we feel Cheever almost toying with us, dangling something right before our faces. This statement seems to hold the whole story within it, yet can we trust anything Neddy thinks or feels?

We get a scene break (the only one in the story) and cut to the second half of his journey, which is the opposite of the first leg in so many ways. He has to wait to get across a highway while people throw beer cans at him. He gets to a public pool, the water of which makes him feel dirty and he scowls with distaste. The lifeguards shout at him to get away as he doesn't have a pass, and he moves on to the final leg of the Lucinda River - home.

In the space of an hour, more or less, he had covered a distance that made his return impossible.

This sentence really struck me. A return is possible. He could just turn around, trek back to his wife through the nicer and nicer pools, back to perfect summer day, but no, he claims it's impossible. So, somewhere in the back of Neddy's mind, he knows something is not right. He can't go back to the way things were. His life is forever altered.

Even the use of the term more or less here is perfect writing. Everything is pointing to a sense that nothing here is real.

He gets closer to home, the conversations start to get weirder, confusing us (and Neddy).

"We've been terribly sorry to hear about all your misfortunes, Neddy."

"My misfortunes" Ned asked. "I don't know what you mean."

"Why, we heard that you'd sold the house and that your poor children…"

"I don't recall having sold the house," Ned said, "and the girls are at home."

"Yes," Mrs Halloran sighed. "Yes…"

We've been leading up to this point for the whole story. Neddy has had something awful happen and is in stark denial, escaping whatever those events were, spiralling into drink. He's getting closer to the truth, having to face it.

The worst of it was the cold in his bones and the feeling that he might never be warm again.

Each neighbour is trying to remind him of what happened or help him out along the way (or just hand him a drink to drown his sorrows).

He gets to the Sachses', and he needs a drink. We almost feel his desperation for a drink to help him think straight. But he can't get one. The husband has had surgery and due to his problems, they simply don't have alcohol in their house. This confuses Neddy. Then we get this from Cheever as another pointer to what really happened to our Neddy:

Was he losing his memory, had his gift for concealing painful facts let him forget that he had sold his house, that his children were in trouble…?

It all seems to be slipping in and out of his mind like a bad dream that he can't hold on to. Here is where we really ask how far gone is he with alcoholism. Is that what's frying his brain? Is that what led him to do whatever it was he did?

The next pool at the Biswangers' is a bad experience for him. Grace Biswanger cuts him with a jibe or two. When he gets his drink, the bartender seems to scowl at him. He swims the pool and gets on his way, but he can't swim as well as he used to. His body is failing him, and he becomes the man who cannot dive head-first into pools.

We get to Shirley Adams. He admits to us that he'd had something of an affair with Shirley and is very flippant about it, but she is not pleased to see him.

"I'm swimming across the county." [Ned]

"Good christ. Will you ever grow up?"

"What's the matter?"

"If you've come here for money," she said, "I won't give you another cent."

The essential question - what the hell happened / what did he do?

What the hell have you been up to, Neddy? As we read, we're trying to put this puzzle together. Has he had an affair with this Shirley and got caught? Why is she talking about money? What happened to his kids? These questions strike even harder at the end when we see that his house is locked up with signs of ruin like no one has lived there for ages.

And these questions go unanswered, leaving us (or me at least) wanting to read it again for clues.

And that's what's so effective about this tale. It doesn't hold your hand but entices you enough to chew over it. The writing creates this surreal atmosphere that feels like you're first in a dream, then a nightmare.

He was living his best life, drinking it up all the time, not a care in the world. Did that lack of care and chase of a good time ruin everything? Was he caught sleeping around? Was he a bad dad putting his kids in awful situations which is hinted at more than once in the tale?

We don't know. And that's what drives me nuts (in a good way).

What were your thoughts? Did I miss anything? Was this post too long?