1. Cheever The Swimmer Review
2. John Cheever The Swimmer New Yorker

The Swimmer Summary. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “The Swimmer” by John Cheever. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. The Swimmer — a short story by American author John Cheever, published in 1964 in the short story collection The Brigadier and the Golf Widow.

“The Swimmer” — John Cheever (1964) It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, “I. 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. The aquatic adventure Neddy Merrill embarks upon in John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer” seems at first to be the light-hearted and innocent idea of a middle-aged man in an affluent community. John Cheever The Swimmer Analysis 249 Words 1 Pages. In John Cheever 's “The Swimmer”, Neddy Merrill’s life is surrounded by rose-tinted surrealism. In the story, Neddy decides to be adventurous, and to swim in each of his neighbor’s swimming pools.

Prior to this evening, I had never read anything by John Cheever, so I was quite unprepared to encounter a story with such a wealth of wit, imagination and insight. “The Swimmer” is impossibly dense, and I’m sure a blog post won’t do it justice. It is, by turns, hilarious and heartbreaking, casting an astute satire on suburban ennui while wisely dissecting human nature in broad strokes of the scalpel. The protagonist, Neddy Merrill, begins the story by undertaking a mission to “swim” across his suburban neighborhood, which in his limited scope of perspective means ambling from one gaudy house to the next, eking a drink out of his neighbors’ bars, swimming the length of their respective pools, and moving on. Even from the beginning of the story, I think Cheever’s aim is to examine the pratfalls of self-delusion or willful ignorance. We meet a character whose worldview is completely contained within the artifice of cocktail parties and the ensuing small talk that as far as he’s concerned, an “adventure” is merely a leisurely tour through the places he’s already been and the people he’s already met, all of which resemble one another uncannily. He considers his bizarre, meandering path a “stream” and names it after his wife, but it neither flows like a body of water nor resembles the processes of love. Cheever’s clever wordplay deliberately underplays the fact that a story billed as an epic journey is really just an account of a man getting drunk and systematically bothering his neighbors.

That is, until the story evolves into a surreal, Kafka-esque fantasy, at which point the implications of Cheever’s satire are inflated astronomically and Neddy’s stupid ramblings become allegorical of the universal tragedies of life. As his mission unfolds in a series of independently trite episodes, Neddy becomes apparently unhinged from time and space, a revelation that Cheever lets leak out very carefully, whetting the reader’s appetite with subtle and ambiguous foreshadowing. As an indeterminate amount of time passes, Neddy becomes vaguely aware of several extremely important events in his life that seem to have occurred while he was on his pointless crusade between drinks and swimming pools. He appears to have missed a love affair, a series of financial and familial tragedies, the illness of a close friend, and his own decline from a social dynamo (as far as he was concerned) to a pitiable pariah. The “point,” I think, can be oversimplified thusly: in circumstances bereft of variance or real interpersonal satisfaction, we find ways to distract ourselves from life and wind up blocking its most significant moments from our minds. Neddy gives himself an arbitrary goal, full of repetitive episodes, and follows it brainlessly, drunkenly, hopelessly. And in the process, his life simply moves on without him. I’ve only just read it for the first time, but “The Swimmer” strikes me as a close look at self-deception and cognitive dissonance. It’s about the ways we shield ourselves from painful memories and self-examination, about that moment we’re all doomed to reach when we look back on the events that most boldly marked our decades on this earth and feel as though we never saw them happen. Cheever deserves high marks for finding humor in this topic, and for presenting it in an entirely original manner. Some questions:

1. This story pulls off a balancing act between the fantastically surreal and the bleakly realistic. Can this story succeed simultaneously as an allegory and a character study? Or does one interpretation cheapen the other?

2. This story can be read with varying degrees of literalism. Is Neddy like Rip Van Winkle, a regular man caught up in a bizarre anomaly of time? Or has this story occurred “in his head,” as it were? Are we reading about a regular person plagued by nightmarish circumstances, or is this story a portrait of a broken mind?

3. We never learn much about the events Neddy seems to have “missed” or “forgotten.” Does this lack of exposition service the story or lessen its impact? Why?

The Swimmer is a 1968 American surrealdrama film starring Burt Lancaster.^[1] The film was written and directed by Academy Award-nominated husband-and-wife team of Eleanor Perry (screenplay adaptation) and Frank Perry (director). The story is based on the 1964 short story 'The Swimmer' by John Cheever, which appeared in the July 18, 1964, issue of The New Yorker.^[2] The 95-minute movie adds new characters and scenes consistent with those in the original 12-page short story.

Plot[edit]

On a sunny day in an affluent suburb in Connecticut, a fit and tanned middle-aged man in a bathing suit, Ned Merrill, drops by a pool party being held by old friends. They offer him a cocktail while nursing hangovers from the night before. As they share stories, Ned realizes there is a series of backyard swimming pools that could form a 'river' back to his house, making it possible for him to 'swim his way home'. Ned dives into the pool, emerging at the other end and beginning his journey. Ned's behavior perplexes his friends, who apparently know worrisome things about his recent past which he seems to have forgotten.

As Ned travels, he encounters other neighbors. He meets 20-year-old Julie, who used to babysit his daughters (whom he repeatedly refers to as 'at home playing tennis'), and reveals his plan to her; she joins him. They crash another pool party and sip champagne. While chatting in a grove of trees, Julie reveals that she had a schoolgirl crush on Ned. After she tells him about two incidents of sexual harassment in her workplace, Ned begins talking about how he will protect her, making plans for the two of them. Discomfited by his intimate approaches, Julie runs away.

Ned meets a wealthy older couple, unbothered by his eccentric behavior but also unimpressed by his posturing. He then encounters Kevin, a lonely young boy, whom he tries to teach how to swim. They use an abandoned, empty pool, which Ned urges the boy to imagine is filled with water. The boy warms to this method, and soon is 'swimming' the length of the empty pool. As Ned takes his leave, he glances back and sees the boy bouncing on the diving board over the deep end of the empty pool. He rushes back to remove him from the diving board, then departs.

Ned fails to make more than a superficial connection with the people he meets, being obsessed with his journey, and becoming increasingly out of touch with reality. The neighborhood consists of judgmental, well-heeled people intent on one-upmanship, and Ned is confused by hints that his life might not be as untroubled as he believes.

Ned walks into another party where the hostess calls him a 'party crasher'. He encounters a bubbly girl named Joan, who does not know him. Ned asks her to join him, and Joan is intrigued until his speech becomes more fantastical. A friend leads her away from him. Ned jumps into the pool, making a big splash which grabs the attention of the guests. When he emerges from the water, he notices a hot dog cart that used to be his. Ned gets into a spat with the homeowner, who claims to have bought it at a white elephant sale.

Ned shows up at the backyard pool of Shirley Abbott, a stage actress with whom he had an affair several years earlier. His warm memories of their time together contrast with her own experience of being 'the other woman'. Unable to reconcile his feelings with the pain he caused, Ned wades into the deep end of the pool.

Ned trudges barefoot alongside a busy highway, then reaches a crowded public swimming pool. After being treated demeaningly by the gatekeeper, he encounters a group of local shop owners who derisively ask him 'How do you like our water?' They indicate surprise at his appearance at such a plebeian location and ask him when he will settle his unpaid bills. When some of them make vicious comments about his wife's snobbish tastes and his out-of-control daughters' recent troubles with the law, Ned flees.

The skies darken and rain begins falling. Amid a downpour at sunset, a shivering, limping Ned staggers home; the tennis court where his daughters were supposedly playing is in disrepair, and his house is locked and deserted, with several windows broken. Anguished, Ned repeatedly tries to open the door, before slumping to the ground in the doorway.

Cast[edit]

• Burt Lancaster as Ned Merrill
• Janet Landgard as Julie Ann Hooper
• Janice Rule as Shirley Abbott
• Joan Rivers as Joan
• Tony Bickley as Donald Westerhazy
• Marge Champion as Peggy Forsburgh
• Kim Hunter as Betty Graham
• Bill Fiore as Howie Hunsacker
• Rose Gregorio as Sylvia Finney
• Charles Drake as Howard Graham
• House Jameson as Mr. Halloran
• Nancy Cushman as Mrs. Halloran
• Bernie Hamilton as Halloran's chauffeur
• Jimmy Joyce as Jack Finney
• Michael Kearney as Kevin Gilmartin Jr.
• Richard McMurray as Stu Forsburgh
• Jan Miner as Lillian Hunsacker
• Diana Muldaur as Cynthia
• Keri Oleson as Vernon Hooper
• Cornelia Otis Skinner as Mrs. Hammar
• Dolph Sweet as Henry Biswanger
• Louise Troy as Grace Biswanger
• Diana Van der Vlis as Helen Westerhazy

Casting notes[edit]

• After working on several television series, Janet Landgard's first featured cinematic role was in this film.^[3]
• The Swimmer was comedian Joan Rivers' film debut as an actress. She had appeared as herself three years earlier in Hootenanny a Go Go, also released as Once Upon a Coffeehouse.^[4] In The Swimmer, her short scene took an unexpectedly long time to film, which she blamed on Lancaster. She later wrote in her autobiography; 'he redirected every line...Frank (Perry) wanted a happy girl who then got hurt. Lancaster was going to be Mr. Wonderful who came up against a mean bitch, and was right not to go off with her. Trying to please both men, I was going back and forth between line readings, and nothing made sense.'^[5]
• Janice Rule replaced Barbara Loden in the part of Shirley Abbott.^[5]
• Cheever has a cameo appearance in the film in a brief scene greeting the characters played by Lancaster and Landgard.^[6]

Production[edit]

The Swimmer was produced by Sam Spiegel, a three-time Academy Award for Best Picture winner, who ultimately removed his name from the film (although the logo of his company, Horizon Pictures, remains). It was filmed largely on location in Westport, Connecticut, hometown of director Frank Perry.^[7]

Although he was a trained athlete, star Burt Lancaster had a fear of the water, and took swimming lessons from former Olympian and UCLA water polo coach Bob Horn to prepare for the film.^[8]

After principal photography from July to September 1966, Perry expected to shoot additional transition scenes but was ultimately fired by Spiegel. The producers instead brought in Lancaster's friend, the young director Sydney Pollack and cinematographer Michael Nebbia for January 1967 reshoots in California. Pollack reportedly shot several transitions and scenes, including scenes with Kim Hunter replacing Sally Gracie, Charles Drake replacing Larry Haines, Bernie Hamilton replacing Billy Dee Williams and Janice Rule replacing Barbara Loden. According to Eleanor Perry, Sam Spiegel and Elia Kazan both had an interest in getting the scene where Merrill assaults Abbott toned down and subsequently each blamed the other for Loden's replacement. In addition to the above scenes, Pollack and Nebbia also shot the scene with Lancaster and the horse as well as some retakes of the Song Of Solomon scene. According to Lancaster, when the film still needed an additional day of shooting, he paid $10,000 for it out of his own pocket.^[5]

Soundtrack[edit]

The score was composed by a first-time film composer, 24-year-old^[5]Marvin Hamlisch, and was orchestrated by Leo Shuken and Jack Hayes. The music has dramatic passages for a small orchestra along with a mid-1960s pop sound.^[9] Hamlisch got the job after Spiegel hired him to play the piano at one of his legendary parties.^[5] The soundtrack album was originally released as an LP by CBS Records in 1968, while the complete score was released in 2006 by Film Score Monthly.^[10]

Response[edit]

Cheever The Swimmer Review

The initial box office response to the film was 'lackluster'^[11] but the critical response has improved in recent years, with the movie gaining cult film status.^[12][13] Film critic Roger Ebert called The Swimmer 'a strange, stylized work, a brilliant and disturbing one.'^[14]Vincent Canby in The New York Times wrote: 'although literal in style, the film has the shape of an open-ended hallucination. It is a grim, disturbing and sometimes funny view of a very small, very special segment of upper-middle-class American life.'^[15]Variety said: 'a lot of people are not going to understand this film; many will loathe it; others will be moved deeply. Its detractors will be most vocal; its supporters will not have high-powered counter-arguments.'^[5]

After the film's restoration and re-release by Grindhouse Releasing in 2014, Brian Orndorf of Blu-ray.com gave the Blu-ray release five stars, commenting; 'it's a strange picture, but engrossingly so, taking the viewer on a journey of self-delusion and nostalgia that gradually exposes a richly tortured main character as he attempts to immerse himself in a life that's no longer available to him', commenting that Lancaster gives a 'deeply felt, gut-rot performance...and communicates every emotional beat with perfection'.^[16]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 100%, based on reviews from 22 critics, with an average rating of 7.75/10.^[17]

John Cheever The Swimmer New Yorker

Home media[edit]

The Swimmer was originally released on DVD in 2003.^[18][12] The 2003 release was considered a 'ho-hum looking widescreen transfer ... (with) a number of imperfections (including grain and dirt aplenty)', the image suffering from 'a true lack of detail and bleeding colors' and was criticized for having few special features.^[18][12]

In March 2014, Grindhouse Releasing/Box Office released The Swimmer on Blu-ray in high definition. The release received positive reviews, with Blu-ray.com giving it a rare five stars.^[16] Eccentric Cinema praised the company, saying 'Grindhouse have been establishing themselves as the Criterion of offbeat cinema... They have taken a previously rare, and quite obscure, title and given it the special edition treatment that its fans have long dreamt of. The two-disc DVD/Blu-ray combo pack is attractively packaged and is stuffed to the gills with extras, but first things first: the film itself looks stunning in a new high definition, 1.85/16x9 transfer.'^[19]

Extras on the release include a five-part documentary, The Story of the Swimmer, which includes comments from surviving production and cast members including Janet Landgard, Joan Rivers, Marge Champion, first and second assistant directorsMichael Hertzberg and Ted Zachary, Bob Horn, as well as Lancaster's daughter Joanna, and archival interviews with composer Marvin Hamlisch and editor Sidney Katz.^[20] Reviewer Troy Howarth of Eccentric Cinema remarked: 'It's a brilliant piece of work by editor/director Chris Innis and it definitely raises the bar of what one can expect with such retrospective featurettes.'^[19] Brian Orndorf of Blu-ray.com commented: 'The Story of The Swimmer...is a miraculous five-part documentary from Innis that dissects the feature in full...the candor put forth here is outstanding, generating a riveting tale of a Hollywood tug of war...It's an exhaustive documentary, but there's never a dull moment.'^[16]

Also included in the release are title sequence outtakes, Frank Perry's storyboards, production stills (including Loden's deleted scene), trailers, TV spots, an audio recording of Cheever reading the original short story, as well as a 12-page color booklet with essays by filmmaker Stuart Gordon and Innis.^[16][20][21] The cover sleeve comes with new cover art from illustrator Glen Orbik.^[22] There is also a separate 2013 interview with Champion.^[16] The International Press Academy has recognized Grindhouse Releasing's restoration of The Swimmer with a 2015 Satellite Award for 'Outstanding Overall Blu-Ray/DVD'.^[23]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Newell, C.H. (September 13, 2016). 'The Swimmer: Decadence, Decay & The American Dream'. Film Inquiry.
2. ^
3. ^'Janet Landgard in Lancaster Film'. Independent Star News. April 21, 1968. p. 41. Archived from the original on January 4, 2014 – via Newspapers.com.
4. ^Robinson, Tasha (November 5, 2012). '1965's Hootenanny A Go-Go teaches us that boats and folk songs are the key to getting lucky'. The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on September 23, 2014. Retrieved April 30, 2015.
5. ^ ^abcdefStafford, Jeff 'The Swimmer' on TCM.com
6. ^Buford, Kate (2013). Burt Lancaster: An American Life. Aurum Press. p. 242.
7. ^'Notes' on TCM.com
8. ^Randazzo, Michael (January 12, 2019). 'Passages: Bob Horn, U.S. Olympic and UCLA Men's Swimming and Water Polo Coach, Passes Away at 87'. Swimming World.
9. ^'Music' on TCM.com
10. ^'The Swimmer (1968)'Film Score Monthly
11. ^Hastings, Michael 'Review' at Allmovie.com
12. ^ ^abc'The Swimmer (Grindhouse Releasing Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack review)'. Schlockmania. March 27, 2014.
13. ^Murray, Noel (March 31, 2014). 'Reviews: The Swimmer'. The Dissolve.
14. ^Ebert, Roger (July 2, 1968). 'The Swimmer movie review & film summary (1968)'. Chicago Sun-Times.
15. ^Canby, Vincent (May 16, 1968). 'Cross-County 'Swimmer': Burt Lancaster Stars in Cheever Story'. The New York Times.
16. ^ ^abcdeOrndorf, Brian (March 24, 2014) 'The Swimmer Blu-ray & DVD Combo Pack' review. Blu-ray.com
17. ^'The Swimmer (1968)'. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
18. ^ ^abNaugle, Patrick (April 29, 2003). 'Review - The Swimmer'. DVD Verdict. Archived from the original on October 19, 2003.
19. ^ ^abHowarth, Troy (April 4, 2014) 'The Swimmer' (Blu-ray/DVD combo review)Eccentric Cinema
20. ^ ^abDursin, Andy (March 24, 2014) 'Aisle Seat 3–25: The Swimmer, Wolf of Wall Street'. Film Score Monthly
21. ^Kastenhuber, Ken (April 10, 2014) 'The Swimmer' (Blu-ray/DVD combo review), McBastard's Mausoleum
22. ^McClannahan, Sean (April 4, 2014) 'The Swimmer' (Blu-ray review)Agents of Geek
23. ^'Current Nominees – 2014 Awards'International Press Academy

External links[edit]

• The Swimmer at the American Film Institute Catalog
• The Swimmer at IMDb
• The Swimmer at the TCM Movie Database
• The Swimmer at AllMovie