Author’s note: “Weekend Short” is a recurring column profiling short stories. Analysis from the readership is encouraged in the comments section.
Welcome to the weekend!
Introduction and Excerpt
Published in the New Yorker in 1964, John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” is an elegant and surreal retelling of the myth of Narcissus stretched to encompass an entire class of men: old money; the WASPs. Amusingly, the story’s barb was directed at the very people who may have subscribed to the New Yorker (or National Review) during that period. But unlike 1999’s derivative and heavy-handed American Beauty and its class criticism, “The Swimmer” critiques its subject and his friends as a peer (Cheever himself was raised in a suburban setting until the financial ruin of his father) rather than sinister or closeted — the democratized wealth and growth of the 1950s have conquered even the redoubts and estates of the families whose names used to mean something. Our protagonist, Neddy, is attending a pool party at the Westerhazy home, whereupon he decides to swim through every pool between their home and his on his route home. The man we see departing, he who dares to smack a statue of Aphrodite on her bronze rump, will bear the readers on his shoulder and offer to them his mental suspicions, recollections, and pleasures.
John Cheever writes:
It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, “I drank too much last night.” You might have heard it whispered by the parishioners leaving church, heard it from the lips of the priest himself, struggling with his cassock in the vestiarium, heard it on the golf links and the tennis courts, heard it in the wildlife preserve, where the leader of the Audubon group was suffering from a terrible hangover.
You can read the rest here, listen to it here, and purchase a copy here.
Rumination (Spoilers ho!)
First, appreciation for the line, “He was not a practical joker, nor was he a fool, but he was determinedly original, and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure. ” A November cornstalk could not be more dry and saw-toothed than that.
While there is an English conference’s worth of observations to be pulled from “The Swimmer,” the scenes at the highway and the public pool are especially captivating. The highway follows the fury of the storm and the implication of decay and then the disappointment of the Pasterns having abandoned their riding ring while the Welchers’ pool was empty and their home listed for sale in a haphazard manner. Troubled by his vision for returning home, Neddy finds himself on the apron of Route 424 — another schism through which pours the common folk who care who he is or why this now thoroughly middle-aged man is half-naked there. Coarse and rude, symbolized by the beer cans and jeering, there is a vigor in the travelers that seems to have been sapped from the increasingly diminutive Neddy. Furthermore, the highway crossing absorbs the better part of an hour — a significant span of time in this “day.”
The public pool has more of the same for Neddy. The guards, with their “police whistles,” expect him to bathe his feet, shower the scum from himself, and wear an identification disk. Cheever describes the moment this way: “Neddy remembered the sapphire water at the Bunkers’ with longing, and thought that he might contaminate himself — damage his own prosperousness and charm — by swimming in this murk, but he reminded himself that he was an explorer, a pilgrim, and that this was merely a stagnant bend in the Lucinda River.” Neddy’s pilgrimage is one way, and his baptism in “this murk” scrubs from him any standing. From that point on, he is a creature of shame who clings to his memories of rejecting invitations, adultery, and emotional manipulation. His wife and daughters, muses of a sort (he names the outing after his wife), are possessions that disappear as easily as his fortunes.
Ultimately, Cheever captures the decline of a social institution — one unprepared for the end, that cannot recognize the approach of its executioner through the hedges. Whether envy or familiarity most informed Cheever’s tale, it’s difficult to say. There’s much of the author and his father here. A story made all the more haunting looking around and recognizing some of the hallmarks of American hegemony in decline with other forces willing to take from us control and too much of our energy (political and social) spent on vanity and idle amusements.
Many thanks to Phil, Leslie, and Richard from Connecticut for suggesting Cheever.
Wisconsin Postcard
A favorite Okie, Toby Keith, died, and I reckon he had as much to do with my joining the military as anything else. His work with the USO and his unabashedly pro-U.S. songs in the post-9/11 years spoke to a kid just old enough to watch the towers come down. “A sucker punch,” as Keith described the attacks of that day. Observing the Israeli response to 10/7, I see that same righteous fury to extirpate those responsible for the physical and cultural devastation done to a people.
Luther’s Latest
- Report: Medical Records Appear to Have Killed Military Recruitment
- Toby Keith, R.I.P.
- The Constitutional Right to Be a Punk (and Why School Uniforms Are Preferable)
Author’s note: If there’s a short story you’d like to see discussed in the coming weeks, please send your suggestion to label@nationalreview.com. You can peruse the library of past shorts here.