THE SWIMMER: John Cheever

“He was not a practical joker nor was he a fool but he was determinedly original and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure.”

This is the justifiably famous story where a man does not yet know he is on his life’s last legs as, whether drunk or not, he attempts to swim the county upon a ‘river’ named after his wife, from garden swimming-pool to garden swimming-pool of his erstwhile neighbours, them often holding pool parties, a rite of passage that is like the absurd struggles of life itself towards the emptiness of death? Never to realise that life itself had been even emptier than death, I guess. Even fame, if one attains it by, say, writing great stories, is eventually empty. Eventually empty, whatever the achievements of privileged pedigree with its own struggles and hurdles, too, I guess, after yesterday.

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That Glimpse of Truth, context here: https://nemonymousnight.wordpress.com/986-2/