Maybe it was just where I was in my life, but I somehow discovered John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” before the Burt Lancaster film’s resurgence. This may be due to an appearance on The Criterion Channel, which was sold as a big deal. Many compared it to Mad Men with how it painted 1960s malaise and aimlessness of Lancaster swimming in pools. Yes, that is the plot. That is what leads many to share their personal love of the film that continues to trickle to this day. Travis Woods wrote a great piece on the film for Bright Wall/Dark Room. There’s clearly a lot of love out there still for this movie…
So why do I dislike it?
As I mentioned, my introduction to it was much different than most. To people like Woods, they likely discovered it while flipping through options to watch one night. For me, Cheever’s short story came first. In 2018, I took a literature course that focused on 20th-century writers, and this oddball story was on there. To simplify, it was the teacher’s representation of post-modernism. There was a whole lot that didn’t make sense. Even if the story progressed and we understood where we were (though did we?), there wasn’t any idea of time or if anything significant was going on. That was all intentional, adding something meaningful to the plot.
When we ended that day’s lecture, she introduced us to a trailer for The Swimmer (1968), which claimed “When we talk about The Swimmer, are we really talking about ourselves?” She laughed, claiming that it was a bit ridiculous as a marketing ploy. She hadn’t seen it, but there was a clearness that it likely was nothing like the story. After all, and I’m sorry to disappoint those with expectations for a story called “The Swimmer,” but at no point in the story does he run in a field with a horse for absolutely no reason (blah, blah, blah masculine symbolism… I guess that counts).
I think this is one of those cases where “the book was better” perfectly applies. Because I had no cultural conversation to compare my experience with Cheever to, I was allowed to form my own independent thought. Maybe I was comparing Lancaster to Cheever too much, but I will personally say that I was disappointed that The Swimmer wasn’t weird enough, or even allowed to be as dark as the story was. It was a decent adaptation but had I come to it first (or at the height of my Mad Men affection), I may be thinking differently.
The truth is that I love “The Swimmer” as a story. It’s one of those homework assignments where you feel like you discovered a whole new world. You had been living in a cave and suddenly you realized that prose could be flexible, the very definition of sense challenged. This wasn’t like Thomas Pynchon where you knew that he was messing with you. Cheever knew how to sow seeds into the plot that made you have to stop and look back. You wondered if you missed something because one subtle detail was strange. It wasn’t enough to qualify as surrealism, but slowly it becomes clear how bizarre this story is.
And yet, it has always been that way. He starts the story slapping the butts of statues and saying that he’ll have a drink and go swimming in a river he’s named after his lover. Is there any symbolism in that? If there is, Cheever doesn’t make it immediately clear. All that swimming is for him is to get to the next place: a swimming pool. He talks to people about life and it becomes clear after a few different stops that this man dressed in nothing but swim trunks is abusing friendships and ignoring responsibility for whatever perverse personal gain he hopes to get out of life.
We may get details that further his character, but he’s still this confusing creature that plays like he’s going to different swimming pools throughout a day. But is it? Where does one day end and another begins? It’s so riveting to read those pages and try to make sense when it’s clear that this man has drunk too much, his head figuratively and literally underwater, as he finds his body aging and the world around him changing. Does he care? Not as long as there’s a pool to jump into.
I don’t know if the reason that I prefer Cheever to Lancaster is solely about the starting point. It may be that The Swimmer feels more conventional as a movie, making narrative changes that I don’t like. There’s something off about it that I’ve never been able to appreciate. Sure I can appreciate the 60s-ness of things, but I have other outlets for that. I know of other movies that are trippy enough that explore similar themes. I cannot say the same about short stories. I know plenty of weird authors, but I can’t say that they’ve given me the experience that Cheever has.
To go back to a point that the trailer for The Swimmer made: what are we talking about when we talk about this story? If it’s a cautionary tale, it doesn’t really create that sense until the very end. Everything up until that point is treated with a lackadaisical vibe that makes you realize the redundancy of this act. Why is he still swimming? He surely can’t get any pleasure out of this, and yet he does it day after day. What is his job? He’s the swimmer, that’s what.
So why are we even concerned with this story? Why do we need to follow this man on his journey of insignificance? If I’m being honest, the thing that becomes clearest is that it forces you to engage with this type of behavior. Maybe you’re not someone who has friends with pools. Maybe you’re just someone who enjoys the pleasure of partying or leisure activities. Those are nice and are important for your mental health, but they cannot be your defining trait. When we’re stuck in a whirlwind of endorphins, what is life but one big blur? An afternoon can disappear in the blink of an eye, and we’ll have to deal with the circumstances.
Do we want to end up like the swimmer, whose life lacks anything more meaningful? Even his family feels like it fades with the ripples of waves built from his latest dive-in. Cheever’s only clue that this is ridiculous is that he’s a man who never puts on a suit. He’s constantly in swim trunks, running around in these blacked-out moments of his life, eager to find ways to dull the pain. Is this all an allegory for his drinking problem? Even when you think that you understand whatever Cheever is saying, you really only have begun to scratch the surface.
To be fair, I can appreciate what The Swimmer does visually with Lancaster. As a story about an aging male, it is intriguing to view him physically changing throughout this process. Because of his unique build, Lancaster is able to reflect a man who is worn down over time despite having some youthful spirit. He seems out of place enough that you buy into his depiction. I just wish that I had the ability to appreciate the film’s lack of awareness of time with as much satisfaction as the story does.
I think on the page it’s easier because you don’t have any commitment to give the audience context clues. A lot of writing’s best moments come from an ambiguity that is removed from just about every other medium. There’s no need to tell you how to tonally feel, so everyone’s point of concern will likely flare up at different points. Some may look at the beginning and immediately question his motives. Some may take the journey with him, reading those paragraphs and feeling exhausted and over it before they question “The Swimmer.” That’s probably the most enjoyable path to take, as it means that you have the chance to look back and realize, like a bad hangover, everything that was so messed up on the journey.
I don’t wish to give away the ending, though it caught me off guard. It’s a logical twist (probably the most logical part of the whole story), but one that puts everything else into context. What is the value of swimming if you’re the only one doing it? How can life be worthwhile when you’ve been enclosed in this trapped space, unable to move beyond suburbia? No matter what detail you look at, I guarantee that there are a dozen ways to spin it.
The story allows for endless thought and reflects the best of post-modernism as a literary form. Whereas “Gravity’s Rainbow” goes even further, it’s more frustrating because it forces you to interact with your own perceived annoyance and confusion. “The Swimmer” is just digestible enough that its strangeness doesn’t perturb the reader. More than anything, I love the feeling of a story interacting with the reader, telling a story while asking us what makes this story valuable. Why are we here and why should we care? In all honesty, the answer is impossible to pin down or fill in a box of fridge magnet words.
Maybe one day I will give The Swimmer another chance, especially now that there’s a context for why others like it. Where I went in thinking that it was a forgotten mediocrity, I can now appreciate it as something more. Sure, I will still be annoyed when I come across the image of Lancaster running with horses, but will I appreciate what it’s saying more? It’s a good film on its own, but it fails when compared to the experience of living in Cheever’s words, having time to rewind and piece together a picture that will never be congruent.
I suppose that I should be glad that “The Swimmer” in any form is being talked about in a modern context. I definitely think it’s worthy of being looked at in order to understand a complex side of masculinity, written over 50 years ago that still rings somewhat true. What are we doing with our life that is meaningful? Cheever did it by pointing out how ridiculous swimming is. I could only aspire to write a story as bending as his. It’s so much fun even when it’s so sad, and that can’t be refuted. I hope you take time to enjoy both, though do know I think it explains why post-modernism works better on the page than on the screen.
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