SOURCE: Slabey, Robert M. “John Cheever: The ‘Swimming’ of America.” In Critical Essays on John Cheever, edited by R. G. Collins, pp. 180-91. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1983.

In the following essay, Slabey declares “The Swimmer” to be “an imaginative vision of American reality,” comparing the story with Washington Irving's “Rip Van Winkle,” suggesting that both tales are “re-visions of archetypal Americans and situations which link the destiny of characters with the meaning of American history.”

… the story of Rip Van Winkle has never been finished, and still awaits a final imaginative recreation.

—Constance Rourke

Indeed, the central fact about America in 1970 is the discrepancy between the realities of our society and our beliefs about them. The gap is even greater in terms of our failure to understand the possibilities and potential of American life.

—Charles A. Reich

I

More than a century after Washington Irving described the...