The Swimmer by John Cheever
I’ve taken up something new this summer: swimming lessons. After years of feeling only marginally comfortable in the water, I've decided to try to learn to swim properly – for exercise and, should it ever come to that, for survival.
As I work on my breathing and strokes, I’ve also been thinking about why we swim in the first place. On the wall of the JCC on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I take my classes, there’s a quotation from the Talmud that lists things that parents are obligated to teach their children – one of which, strikingly, is swimming.
Wanting to tie this back to my reading, I found a list of works where swimming is part of the plot, and I immediately gravitated toward a short story by John Cheever titled simply “The Swimmer.” I’d never read this story and thought it was a good opportunity to reintroduce myself to Cheever. I had read his novel Bullet Park years ago and remember liking it, though I must admit I can’t remember anything about it today.
Now that I’ve read “The Swimmer,” I don't know what's taken me so long to discover Cheever's short stories. This is an unforgettable story, almost epic in scope. Little did I know it also invokes this summer's most talked-about fictional character: Odysseus.
Written in 1964, "The Swimmer" is an allegorical tale centered on a suburban husband and father, Neddy Merrill. We meet Neddy relaxing at a pool party, with one hand dipped in the pale green water and the other around a glass of gin. On a whim, he decides to travel home by swimming through his neighbors’ pools that dot the way – a route he dubs the “Lucinda River” after his wife.
“The day was beautiful and it seemed to him that a long swim might enlarge and celebrate its beauty,” Cheever writes.
It's a ridiculous idea, and yet, there's also something quintessentially American about it. Where else would there be such an abundance of backyard pools that such a journey would be feasible? The concept also seems quaint – Neddy knows all the neighbors, and it never crosses his mind that he might not be welcomed. If someone tried this today, they'd surely be arrested.
Neddy's first stop is the home of the Grahams, where he is indeed greeted warmly and offered a drink before he swims the length of their pool. But things quickly become surreal. At one house, all the doors and windows are open, yet there are no signs of life. When a storm approaches, Neddy takes shelter in another neighbor’s gazebo, where he notices the scattering of red and yellow autumnal leaves – an impossibility for a summer’s day. He begins to shiver from the cold, encounters more decay, and the landscape becomes more menacing. Strangers on the road laugh, jeer and throw a beer can at him, and his body shows signs of aging.
Yet Neddy perseveres, finally making it to the pool of an older couple, the Hallorans, who tell him ominously that they are sorry for his misfortunes. By the time the weary and broken Neddy arrives home, eager to reunite with his wife (just like Odysseus) and daughters, the house is locked and empty.
It’s a nightmarish story that paints suburbia as a kind of hell, even if on the surface it is a placid place where attractive people sip cocktails beside sapphire-hued pools.
At the outset, Neddy sees himself as an almost legendary figure. He is confident, charming, and ready to encounter "the natives” he meets along the way. Cheever's language suggests something primitive in Neddy’s journey; he has no map, just an animal-like sense of the direction homeward. As he swims, he becomes attuned to the birds who are acutely aware of the impending rain. He has a strong desire to swim nude, though he recognizes it wouldn’t be appropriate. By the time he arrives at the Hallorans’ pool, however, they are unabashedly naked, which suggests some kind of societal breakdown.
Neddy's suburban landscape becomes more and more unrecognizable during his travels. He goes from blithely self-assured at the start of his odyssey to vulnerable, confused and reviled. I couldn’t help but notice that some of the pools he visits belong to neighbors named Levy and Sachs, subtle clues perhaps that the world is swiftly changing and Neddy, who represents a certain white male Christian archetype, is not equipped for it.
“The Swimmer” is one of 61 stories in The Stories of John Cheever. While I intended to read this story only and then move on, I’ve become intrigued by Cheever’s unsettling depiction of mid-twentieth-century America. So, just as Neddy dives from pool to pool, I’ll be immersing myself in a few more of Cheever’s stories and sharing my thoughts on them in some upcoming posts.
