Interpreting the Story

Now that you've read the story and know a little bit about John Cheever's life, let's actually look closer at The Swimmer. With the first reading of it, the story comes off about a man, Ned, venturing throughout the day swimming and having various meetings with his neighbors.
When looking closer at the story though, you'll start to notice that something seems 'off'  and may even be confused by what's wrong.

For Ned, his journey takes place across the span of one day, but looking closer it becomes apparent that this journey actually takes place across a few months, as the trees and such are described as being changed.

"The force of the wind had stripped a maple of its red and yellow
leaves and scattered them over the grass and the water. Since it was midsummer the tree must be
blighted, and yet he felt a peculiar sadness at this sign of autumn”

When we first meet Ned, he his in high spirits and full of energy. With every encounter he makes with a neighbor, there is bad news or hints that things have gone wrong in his life. Each encounter makes an impact on his mood and causes him to ponder what he is missing.

It appears that Ned has just been "swimming" through life and not really paying attention to things that have happened in his life.

"We’ve been terribly sorry to hear about your misfortunes, Neddy...Why we’ve heard that you’d sold your house and that your poor children…”

The mention of hard ecomonic times through the entire story can be seen as relating to the Great Depression, which John Cheever's family suffered through.

Ned also drinks a decent amount through the entire day. Everytime he gets bad news or is reminded of something that has gone wrong he turns to alcohol.

“He needed a drink. Whiskey would warm him, pick him up, carry him through the last of his
journey, refresh his feeling that it was original and valorous to swim across the
county”

This could easily be related to John Cheever, as he struggled a lot in his life with alcohol.


After learning about Cheever's life I think relating him to Ned is pretty easy. Ned uses alcohol to deal with misfortunes and life, has suffered through money issues and having to sell his house, and even having relationship issues with his wife and children.

In the post about his life, it mentions that John Cheever suffered with all of these things, including having marriage troubles.
Maybe Cheever himself felt as if he 'swam' through life, and lost things along the way and wished he had payed attention more.



References:
Boger, Paul. "The Swimmer." Thesis. Penn State University, 2010. Print

Cheever, John/ Bailey Blake (EDT). John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writings. N.p.: Penguin Group USA, 2009. Print.
Wilhite, Keith. "John Cheever's Shady Hill" Studies in American Fiction 34.2 (2006)

The Man Himself

John Cheever was born on May 27, 1912, 7 years after his brother Fred.
His mother was 39, while his father was 49; and they lived in Wollaston, Massachusetts.

it's been said that his birth definitely wasn't planned. Cheever' parents always seemed to make this known to him, by telling him things such as

"If I hadn't drunk two Manhattans one afternoon, you never would have been conceived."

His father wanted him to be aborted so badly, that he invited an abortionist to dinner. The idea of an unwanted child shows up in various works of his.

Cheever himself has said that his early life was a sunny childhood, but an extremely troubled adolescence.
He got little attention from his father, who was always away on business, and his mother gave all her attention to charity projects.

At age 11 John told his parents he wanted to be a writer, they responded by telling him that it was fine, as long as he didn't expect any fame or fortune. He didn't care obviously.

Cheever didn't seem to like school either, he dropped out of Thayer Academy and transferred to another school. In 1929 he won a short story contest and was invited back to Thayer; this didn't last long though. His grades were failing and was eventually told he either needed to apply himself or leave, John Cheever left.

In 1935 The New Yorker bought his short story called "Buffalo" for $45. This was the first of many he gave them. He worked as an editor for the WPA Guide to New York City but quit after less than a year, but then met and married his wife Mary Winternitz in 1941.

1942 John enlisted in the Army and then in 1943 wrote a collection of published short stories The Way Some People Live, and got mixed reviews. He later on ended up hating the stories saying they were immature. Fortunately for him though, an officer in the Army Signal Corps loved the stories and had Cheever transferred to Queens, NY, while most of his old infantry company were killed during the D-Day Invasion.

Cheever's daughter Susan was born July 31, 1943, and moved his family to Manhattan.
For the next 5 years he'd get up in the morning, dress in his only suit, go to the maid's room inthe basement of the apartment building, strip down to his boxer shorts and wrote.

"The Swimmer" appeared in the July 18, 1964 issue of The New Yorker. In the summer of 1966, a screen adaptation of "The Swimmer," starring Burt Lancaster, was filmed in Westport, Connecticut. Cheever was a frequent visitor on the set, and made a cameo appearance in the movie.

By then Cheever's alcoholism had become severe, along with the notion he was bisexual. His marriage was failing as well, as Cheever was called neurotic and egocentric by his wife. He began an affair with actress Hope Lange in the late 1960s.

On May 12, 1973 John Cheever almost died from pulmonary edema caused by alcoholism. After a month in the hospital, he returned home vowing never to drink again; however, he resumed drinking in August. Despite his precarious health, he spent the fall semester teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

April 9, Cheever was admitted to the Smithers Alcoholic Rehabilitation Unit in New York, where he shared a bedroom and bath with four other men. Driven home by his wife on May 7, Cheever never drank alcohol again.

In March 1977, Cheever appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine with the caption, "A Great American Novel: John Cheever's Falconer." The novel was Number One on the New York Times Best Seller list for three weeks. The Stories of John Cheever appeared in October, 1978, and became one of the most successful collections ever, selling 125,000 copies in hardback and winning universal acclaim.

On April 27, he received the National Medal for Literature at Carnegie Hall.


He died on June 18, 1982 from cancer.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cheever#Early_life_and_education
Donaldson, Scott. John Cheever: A Biography. Lincoln, NE: IUniverse, 2001. Print.

Read The Story!

If you've never gotten the chance to read John Cheever's The Swimmer I've included a pdf link in this post that's readable online, printable and downloadable.

Enjoy!

It will open in a new window:
READ THE STORY HERE




xx

Testing

just testing

to see

how

everything

looks.