[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by evollove

I like how it's a little "off" throughout. For example, the weather changes in unusual ways during his journey. For most of the story what's "real" or not is up in the air, but Cheever doesn't make a big deal of it.

that's exactly what i like the most. it's not some journalistic tale of some poor fucker gone to the dogs, but rather it operates with what i called "dream logic" (i stole that term from jp meliville's in his commentary to le samourai).

the swim begins in mid day and ends at night, but it also starts in mid summer and ends in the fall. it operates as fiction should, with dream logic, with one foot in the realm of the symbolic. which is why i loved it, in the end, after 3 tries-- i got past the dull veneer of social realism and entered the poetry.

true also re: saving face. more even so in asia (e.g. japan), the whole ronin genre is based on sustaining untenable status amid social obsolescence and economic ruin.

where i think this story strikes a chord with the american psyche though is in depicting the capacity to delete/forget/ignore disaster in the face of contrary evidence. it's a kind of perverse "positive thinking" that's been at the core of the american XXth century, both as optimism and delusion [edit: see also: willy lohman]. that streak continues unabated today in people like preznit dubya who kept saying that brownie was doing a heck of a job while new orleans drowned, or that the mission was accomplished in iraq, stupid flightsuit & all.