• Cheever The Swimmer Full Text
• Cheever The Swimmer Review

In “The Swimmer,” then, Cheever veers from conventional realism to experiment with a style that emphasizes psychological veracity. Frank Perry ’s 1968 film The Swimmer is adapted at length from the 12-page short story of the same name by famed American author John Cheever.It is the story of Ned Merrill (perhaps the finest performance of Burt Lancaster ’s impressive career), whose summer culminates in a trip through various neighbours’ pools until reaching his own home at the end of a large and affluent county of.

The story starts with a town reeling from a collective hangover. It is a midsummer Sunday afternoon and everyone drank too much the previous night. Neddy Merrill, however, is unperturbed. He reclines by the pool at Donald and Helen Westerhazy's house, full of pleasure at the beautiful day. All of a sudden, it occurs to him that he could swim from the Westerhazys' to his own house, which is about 8 miles away, by traversing the pools of his neighbors. Neddy decides that this is a grand and worthy voyage; naming his route the 'Lucinda River' after his wife, he sets off in just his swimming trunks.

Neddy is full of youthful energy, and he swims vigorously through several pools to start his journey. He is familiar with all of his neighbors, and his interactions with them as he swims their pools come to define the social world of the story. At first, his neighbors are gracious and happy to see him, but about halfway through his journey, a big storm comes. He waits out the rain in a friend's gazebo and then continues on, but the route has changed. Now, he is tired and feels a cold wind penetrate his bones. He seems to have aged, shrunken, or lost weight somehow. Most importantly, the people who he assumes will receive him happily to their homes and maybe offer him a gin before he swims their pool now treat him rudely or gossip about some vague misfortunes of his behind his back. Neddy cannot understand why he is being treated this way. He does not remember any of the events alluded to—selling his house or a misfortune befalling his daughters, for example. Nevertheless, something seems to have happened. Each pool seems to bring Neddy closer to winter, old age, and social death.

Finally, nearly overcome with exhaustion, Neddy reaches his home. As he staggers up the driveway, he notices the house is slightly dilapidated, and no lights are on. Xbox one streaming mac. When he reaches its doors, they are locked and no one is home. He cannot understand where his wife and daughters are. Only at the very end of the text, in the last line, does he realize the house itself is completely empty. The misfortunes he heard whispers of on his voyage were true. Mac ipad simulator.

John Cheever (1912–1982)
From John Cheever: Collected Stories & Other Writings

Cheever The Swimmer Full Text

Burt Lancaster as Ned Merrill in The Swimmer (1968).

The one-hundredth anniversary of John Cheever’s birthday occurs later this month, on May 27, 2012. (He died thirty years ago next month, at the age of seventy.) To commemorate the remarkable career of one of the twentieth-century’s most famous writers, we are pleased to present one of his most famous stories. This week’s selection was suggested to us by Lloyd Fassett of Bend, Oregon, who thinks that the story resonates especially now “because of America’s current economic downturn. . . . Though it was written in the 1960s, I think it reflects our time.”
When John Cheever first began writing “The Swimmer,” he conceived of it as a novel—and he actually wrote a good chunk of it before reconsidering. As Blake Bailey relates in his biography, “Soon Cheever suspected he had ‘a perfectly good’ novel on his hands,” but his self-assurance gradually turned to dissatisfaction:

As he began to find the core of the story, he threw away pages and took yet a different approach. The main technical challenge, he realized, could not be sustained over the course of the novel: that is, Neddy could not possibly repress the truth for some two hundred pages. . . .

Cheever The Swimmer Review

From the approximately 150 pages of material he had assembled, Cheever carved out his finely honed story. Michael Chabon, who first read it as a teenager, called it “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.”
In one way, “The Swimmer” was restored to its original novelistic length, when a 95-minute feature film adaptation starring Burt Lancaster was released in 1968. Although many critics were not enamored by the highly stylized film, Roger Ebert gave it a four-star review: “What we really have here, then, is a sophisticated retelling of the oldest literary form of all: the epic.” Ebert also singled out Burt Lancaster as “superb in his finest performance.” The movie, which was finished by Sydney Pollack when its original director Frank Perry quit the project, has enjoyed an unusually long shelf-life, benefiting from years of late-night television viewings and acquiring of a small yet dedicated following.
It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, “I drank too much last night.” . . . If you don't see the full story below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!