Diving in...
Hi, friends.
If there’s any lesson this year has reinforced for me, it’s the importance of community. I miss hanging out with writers over beers, after readings, in the common rooms of retreats. I miss the small talk. Book recommendations. Long stories. One of the reasons I decided to house this venture on substack is the comment section. It’s my hope that you’ll share your successes and your frustrations and your questions and writerly whatnots so that we might build a little digital community together to tide us over until we can meet face to face again.
Confession: I am secretively competitive. It’s a trait I try to keep hidden. Because it’s evil twin is jealousy and I don’t want to make a placesetting for her at the table. One of the reasons I like writers retreats and conferences so much is the accountability they provide. Knowing everyone is off in their rooms doing their work brings me to the page and keeps me there, working better and longer than I otherwise would. And so, I hope that this will also serve as a nudge for you. A reason to sit with your words. To make a date Sunday afternoons or Monday night or whenever you can squirrel away some time for yourself. (It is important.)
So, let me declare my intentions right here. I intend on sending this little letter to your inboxes on Sundays around lunch, every other week. I intend on reading and writing along side you. I intend on getting work done and pushed out into the world. (And my hope is that you will too.) Other than that, I don’t have a set plan, so if there’s some aspect of craft you’d like me to address, a type of story you want to read and talk about, I’m happy to do it. Just let me know.
Story.
Okay. On to the Story. It’s an oldie but goodie. And still so relevant. Go read John Cheever’s The Swimmer and come back to us.
Craft tidbits.
No really. Did you read it? Go read it.
Okay, then. I’ve been thinking a lot about time. How slippery it is. How it bunches and sags. (Remember the long year of March?) And how a week can become an endless blur of days. That’s what Cheever’s doing so cleverly here and one of the reasons I picked this story for the end of this strange year and the beginning of our time together.
The beauty in this piece is in the subtle shifts. Look at the opening paragraph:
It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, “I drank 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 vestiarium, heard it from the golf links and the tennis courts, heard it from the wildlife preserve where the leader of the Audubon group was suffering from a terrible hangover. “I drank too much,” said Donald Westerhazy. “We all drank too much,” said Lucinda Merrill. “It must have been the wine,” said Helen Westerhazy. “I drank too much of that claret.”
So much is stuffed in this beginning. It begins large and expansive, and then zooms in, not to Neddy himself, not yet, but the Westerhazys and his wife. (And that name. It’s a mood unto itself.) They are so hungover you can almost feel it. But it’s also performative. You can imagine, with each italicized drank, this same call and response every Sunday afternoon. Too, we get the first drop of second person. You are there, eavesdropping, among the residents of Bullet Park.
Poor Neddy, he’s confined to the suburbs (where everything is ordered) and so desperately wants to be someone important. Someone exciting. Legendary. Cheever sets up an explorer metaphor that will continue all the way through:
he was a pilgrim, an explorer, a man with a destiny, and he knew he would find friends all along the way
There’s a great contrast between exploring the great unknown and the confinement of the suburbs, especially these houses where there isn’t an inch of land that isn’t mapped and parceled and manicured by an army of landscapers.
Cheever knows these residents, the detials of their pools. But t isn’t until the fourth page that we get the first indication that time is wonky here with a dip into the future:
It would storm.
It’s such a simple sentence. Conditional. It’s in this paragraph that Neddy also does some mental time travel, imagining himself at the trainstation, as though it were Monday already, every day is as predictable as the next. He knows who will be there.
And yet, it’s after the storm that we realize Ned doesn’t quite have a firm grasp of time:
Mrs. Levy had bought [the lanterns] in Kyoto the year before last, or was it the year before that?
The force of the wind had stripped the maple of its red and yellow leaves…
He seemed to remember having heard something about the Lindley’s and their horses but the memory was unclear.
It’s subtle, but Cheever is laying the ground work here that Neddy’s time is as slippery as the pools he dives into. It’s a nice layering of details, some internal, some external.
The other shift happens on the sixth page when Cheever dips into second person.
Had you gone for a Sunday afternoon ride that day you might have seen him, close to naked, standing on the shoulders of Route 424, waiting for a chance to cross. You might have wondered if he was the victim of foul play, had his car broken down, or was he merely a fool. Standing barefoot in the deposits of the highway—beer cans, rags and blowout patches—exposed to all kinds of ridicule…
It is so good, this shift. Here, we are invited to see the truth of Neddy. He’s not the athlete he thinks he is. He’s no hero. For the first time, he’s outside the safety of his neighborhood, standing alongside litter, being laughed at. Here, Cheever asks the reader to be sympathetic, to have pity on this pitiful man.
We know from that second person switch that things have gone south for our friend Ned. It’s reinforced when he’s at the public pool. The outsider, without the proper credentials. But even when he returns to the confines of his crowd, he’s confronted with reality over and over again. Once at the Hollerans.
“We’ve been so terribly sorry to hear about all your misfortunes, Neddy.”
At the Sachs.
“Why, I’d love to,” Helen said, but there hasn’t been anything in this house to drink since Eric’s operation. That was three years ago.”
At the Binswangers.
“They went for broke overnight-nothing but income-and he showed up drunk one Sunday and asked us to loan him five thousand dollars…”
Each time he deflects, denies that there’s a problem. (As addicts are wont to do.) It’s finally with Shirley Adams, the former mistress (oh, Neddy, you really are a mess), that he has his breakdown.
It was probably the first time in his adult life that he had ever cried, certainly the first time in his life he had ever felt so miserable, cold, tired, and bewildered.
Cheever keeps it plain and simple there. No metaphor. No sleight of hands. Just the facts. (Too, Cheever’s withheld the fact of Ned’s infidelities for most of the story. He’s built trust with the reader, kept us swimming along, only to reveal the depth of Ned’s character flaws as the story ends.)
Even though it’s a silly, arbitrary quest, Neddy keeps the route. He will not waiver. Even though he’s miserable. Even though there are shorter routes home.
He had done what he wanted, he had swum the county, but he was so stupefied with exhaustion that his triumph seemed vague.
And then, at the very end, we realize, he has done it at the expense of everything.
(Oof. Not to get all philosophical on you in this season of taking stock, but how many times do we keep ourselves on paths that are not right merely for the sake of continuing on?)
Sparks.
Two for a new piece: One thing that Cheever is known for is his depiction of the suburbs. He knows the residents of these commuter communities inside and out. He knows their fears and secrets. He knows the social codes. What place do you know? Start there. What is the social scene? How does time move? Who are the characters? (I once tried to explain a Tuscaloosa football Saturday to someone in France. And only then did I really realize how delightfully ludicrous the whole circus is.)
Or. Write a party scene. Make it loud. Make it awkward. Make it the party you are missing terribly right now.
And a revision fix: Find a spot in your piece where you’re stuck. Where it seems flat. Now, come at that scene from second person. What would a bystander see? Someone who has no knowledge of the character or his plight. Write a bit on that and see if it doesn’t allow you to see the work from a new perspective.
Other tidbits.
The Sun Magazine has lifted their paywall for the time being. So read some beauties over there.
Roxane Gay put out this call on the interwebs yesterday for emerging essayists. Sharing it with you. It pays, and pays well.
Dzanc books is having a 20% sale in December with the code: 2020SNAG. Get yourself a present or six.
Speaking of presents, if you’ve been gifted notebooks that don’t suit your needs, Fear No Lit will redistribute your castaways for those in need.
That’s it. Go scribble. Go set your intentions for the new year (writing and otherwise). I’ll see you back in this space January 3rd. I hope you have lovely holidays.
Marsha
If you want a more in depth look at how time can inform character or plot, I’ll be teaching a class on it January 10th and would love to see you there.
Was not ready to be so inspired. Now my day of sitting around waiting for Christmas is shot. Thank you Marsha!!!!!