/18/the-swimmer
After watching the film, THE SWIMMER, a few days ago. I decided to go back and reread the short story. The film was made by Frank Perry in 1968 from a script by his wife who often worked with him in film projects. The movie starred Burt Lancaster in a stunning performance.
THE SWIMMER is a very surreal story and it is amazing to me that the film captured that so well. Ned is a man in his late fifties who decides to traverse the eight miles to his home through suburban swimming pools. All of the pools (almost) belong to his country club set friends. In the movie, he has conversations with a lot of them, but the book only includes a few. As he moves through the country side, the season starts to change and so too how he is greeted by these friends. It is clear he has fallen from grace, from affluence, but I don't want to tell you too much because it will detract from your enjoyment or at least appreciation of the story.
If anything the story spells things out a little more than the movie. In the movie, Lancaster spends the entire 100 minutes in a swim suit. He uses his body to show you the passage of time. Is this a ghost story? Are the pools actually passages of time? You tell me.
This would be on my list of the greatest stories of the 20th century along with "A Good Man is Hard to Find," and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" and "The Lottery" to name a few. Cheever was a master at tone, description, character. He is knocked about writing only about the upper classes but what do you do when that's the world you know. And he is certainly critical of that group in this story.
11 comments:
Burt had Frank Perry and an actress fired. Thought the film resonated more than the story. Not appreciated in its own era -moreso now. As these things happen.
Saw the movie when it first came out and enjoyed it. Should watch it again. I believe it is on Amazon Prime. Who would have thought Burt Lancaster and Joan Rivers in the same movie? I read Cheever's collected stories when it was first published and liked them a lot. He seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years.
I must read more Cheever than I have, Patti. That's just a fact. I really appreciate the reminder of his work.
I also thought the film resonated more. The story was very short and the film fleshed out his neighbors more. Also putting the scene set in a community pool near the end made it so much more effective.
I almost didn't recognize Joan.
I wished Last Summer was on the Criterion collection this month. They do have David and LIsa and the brilliant Diary of a Mad Housewife though.
I read "The Swimmer" in the 1970s and was complete stunned by its power.
We saw the movie in 1968 when it came out (and we were dating). I read the Cheever collection probably 10 (?) years ago and was very interested in reading the original. I was always a Burt Lancaster fan, right to the end and ROCKET GIBRALTAR (which had a great supporting cast too).
I read the story for the first time via your link. I am glad I had read your post first because I think I would have been very confused. I liked it and will have to try more by Cheever. I haven't seen the film either.
I have that collection, sitting here with a bookmark about a quarter way in, haven’t picked it up in a few years. I must get back to it.
Sorry I didn’t get a ss post up today, been reading, or trying to, novels.
Dental surgery (in some hours from now) and exhaustion have been (un)concentrating my mind of late, so I haven't managed to get much down in bytes (vs. paper) of late, either.
Forget where I first read "The Swimmer" but it wasn't Too long before I picked up the mm paperback of THE SHORT STORIES and OH WHAT A PARADISE IT SEEMS and a few others in a small jag...the first released single by my favorite DC punk rock band, Jawbox, was "Bullet Park"...I have on at least two occasions, perhaps both on TCM, landed on the film version in progress, so haven't watched more than a few minutes of it yet. I do have it in an anthology of short stories made into horror films, by which its inclusion is arguably a stretch...
...But I note your favorites cited above lean toward horror, and certainly land smack in suspense fiction for the most part...
I didn't much like LAST SUMMER, while liking the cast. I've yet to deal with anything by or scripted by Evan Hunter that didn't have at least a dram of Big Dumb in it.
Cheever occasionally loved his borderline sf/fantasy on occasion, most famously with "The Enormous Radio"...did he ever writer a story that wasn't uncomfortable with the relatively affluence of the characters, or at least what anxieties they felt as a result? Upper middle-class F. Scott Fitzgerald...
Post a Comment