THE SWIMMER

THE SWIMMER
JOHN CHEEVER
GENRE : ALLEGORICAL FICTION 
FIRST PUBLISHED : 1964

“A masterpiece of mystery, language and sorrow. It starts out, on a perfect summer morning, as the record of a splendid exploit... and ends up as a kind of ghost story.”
— Michael Chabon on The Swimmer

Cheever, "the Chekhov of the suburbs", wrote this story when alcohol had started to take over him in his early fifties. A masterful blend of fantasy and reality, it chronicles a middle-aged man’s gradual acceptance of the truth that he has avoided facing—that his life is in ruins. The story immediately became an object of fascination in literary circles for its surprising blend of realism and surrealism and the emotional punch it delivers.

Neddy Merrill "Ned", a man with the “vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure”, one day inexplicably decides to “swim home” via a trail of his neighbours’ pools. The people he interacts with on this bizarre odyssey include former lovers and pretentious nouveaux riches, leading to hints about his life, shocking revelations about his character, and reflections of the superficiality of upper-middle-class suburbia.

We are introduced to the main character of the story. Ned is enjoying a lazy afternoon by the pool at a neighbor’s house when he realizes that he can map a kind of river of swimming pools in his mind, a river that leads all the way back to his home. He names the swimming pool river Lucinda, after his wife, and begins traveling it. 

“The day was beautiful and it seemed to him that a long swim might enlarge and celebrate its beauty.”

 The way this story starts out in the real and travels into the surreal, the way a journey through a neighborhood becomes an imaginative adventure worthy of an explorer crossing the ocean or the mountains, the way his neighbors become the inhabitants of faraway and new lands, people that must be treated with respect because he is a guest on an adventure, one who requires their hospitality...

Ned’s mood is buoyant; he is greeted warmly at the next party he comes across; is kissed by the hostess; is offered, and accepts, drinks, seeing that -

“like any explorer… the hospitable customs and traditions of the natives would have to be handled with diplomacy if he was ever to reach his destination”.

But, the story which starts on a warm, promising and impressive note, takes its turns. The pools become colder, Ned's muscles become weaker, he becomes tired, the weather changes, his flowery expectations from his neighbours get failed, and he realises his truth. All in a cold, harsh way.

As the story continues, the readers (and as a matter of fact Ned himself) find small notes of uncertainty, a sense of the uncanny creeps into the text, and the reliability of Ned’s memory is called into question -

"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? "

Somewhere around the halfway point, while forced to endure mockery when trying to cross a busy road as he was only in his swim trunks (“He was laughed at, jeered at, a beer can was thrown at him”), Ned realises that he is unable to turn back, and wonders -

 “Why was he determined to complete this journey even if it meant putting his life in danger? At what point had this prank, this joke, this piece of horseplay become serious?”

We get to hear from Mrs. Halloran some supposed facts, which Ned denies without a second thought. Stuffs like Ned has sold his house due to lack of money  and that something serious had happened to his four daughters is alarming. These are further repeated by Ned's ex-lover. His male ego and sense of superiority is clearly shown when he thinks -

"If he had suffered any injuries at the Biswangers’ they would be cured here. Love—sexual roughhouse in fact—was the supreme elixir, the pain killer, the brightly colored pill that would put the spring back into his step, the joy of life in his heart."

The funny part being, he is curtly refused. What follows arouses a zsense of pity in the minds of the readers for Ned. The first time in his adult life, he cries. ironically, this happens to be the least of his problems in real life. His desperation and pretence seems to come to light.  

"...but why should he seem to see Andromeda, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia? What had become of the constellations of midsummer? He began to cry."

And then we realise the truth, Neddy's truth. His inability to remember significant details about his neighbors and his own self indicates that he has been dangerously unfocused with his everyday life. Depression or some other type of psychological illness could be distracting Neddy, rendering him incapable of separating his memories from the reality which surrounds him. 

"He shouted, pounded on the door,tried to force it with his shoulder, and then, looking in at the windows, saw that the place was empty."

By the end of the story, you realize the journey is nothing like what you thought it would be when it started, and that you’ve been reading a story about nothing less than life itself. The Swimmer stands on its own as a portrait of a disintegrating man with its aching nostalgia for a youth that has already passed, and in the surreal way its protagonist slips out of recognizable reality and into what feels like a dream. It definitely is one of my favourite stories of all time.