Quixote Ugly: THE SWIMMER

"He had an inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools."
-- The Swimmer, John Cheever

Of all the great white male midlife crisis epics, outside of TV's MAD MEN, what can beat the Burt Lancaster-starred adaptation of John Cheever's THE SWIMMER (1968)? What kind of 'meet' competition is there for challengers even to lap up against? The recent Time magazine cover lauding Jonathan Franzen as the literary canon's next Great White Hope sent a shock through the up-and-coming, young, brilliant and angry writing community at Pratt. Here was yet another middle-aged higher-educated white male of means writing about mid-life crises, college tenure boondogles, student affairs, eccentric characters spouting pithy one-liners, and car accidents that leave multi-generational ripples across sprawling summer cottage-owning families - just what the world needs now.

I'm guessing on all this, of course. Never read no Franzen, whatever it is he wrote. But the writing community at Pratt was nonplussed and that's enough for me. Sight unseen it was Time grasping at any last straw in the arsenal for keeping awake their dwindling upper middle class white male readership (1), attempting to fully lionize another Norman Mailer, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, or John Cheever, Phillip Roth, or even John Irving. In this way, was it not unlike the drowning grasp of The Swimmer himself!

Wait, is that why I'm writing about it? Dude, I've made my peace with all that, I hope, the loss of the automatic advantages my dad's generation received. I vowed long ago to ever be caught sober in a country club again, unless it was for a memorial service, preferably mine own. (2) How's that for pith? (hic')

THE SWIMMER too is morbidly pithy, it was made the year after I was born but it already saw the writing on the wall for my life story. It's aware of the absurdity of great white drunk male lionization. It reaches into the floater's open chest wound for the heart of white male 'pride of ownership' and finds it all turned to ash except for rotting crotch. But what a crotch! So sad we lost it.

What happened?

According to one disgruntled neighbor of Lancaster's character, Mr. Merrill's: "You got tossed out of your golden playpen, that's what happened."

As an entitled sexist white male myself, born in 1967, I grew up hearing overhearing racist, sexist and Polish jokes, told by adults over cocktails on the couch. Sitting beside the feet of the adults in awe, rushing to refill their drinks on request, blending the whiskey sour mix in the blender, smelling the sweet sugar sweat of hungover adults on copping sips at all hours, the association of maturity with booze, cigarettes and unconscious prejudice is built deep into me. These proclivities forged this site, and though I know it's all wrong, I smoke nonetheless and have an attitude of class entitlement so inappropriate to my actual circumstances that I consider my maintaining it a form of Quixote-ugly heroism. So when I see Burt in THE SWIMMER gradually sink into the deep end of illusion, I weep, for us both. The scene of his humiliation at the hands of the filthy ethnic grocers at the public pool especially wrankles. This is the ultimate in both comeuppance and validation of the class system the film is watching die with the impassive eyes of a five year-old boy on the cusp of sociopathy watching the last gasp of a flopping fish.

The rules of this descent are especially telling, the class consciousness vivid without being judgmental. When the playing field is equal, says all great white epiphany, the lowest common denominator always rules. Once you let the poor people in, your pool is officially 'public' i.e. packed and full of kiddie urine, a slum. On the other hand, maybe it's you who was the slum the whole time: "Ya wanna know what your kids thought of ya, Mr. Merrill?" the grocer says. "They thought you were a big joke!" Exemplifying the nouveu riche (the type who have to tell you how much everything cost), they're like devouring birds who wolf down our Burt like one of Sebastian's baby turtles.

Standing forth from the nouveau riche-ethnic fray, in the film's most touching scene, is Joan Rivers, playing a weary (hungover) but genuinely present broad at the nouveau riche party, who sees--just for a minute--a chance at something new and exciting at the thought of driving him off with Burt on the spur of the moment. But before she can find her car keys, the moment passes. Still, what a moment. Everyone Burt Lancaster meets before her is either oblivious to his 'living-dead' ego or resentful of his past flaunting. Joan is just lonesome and radiating that special late afternoon ennui. Her sad but witty resilience creates a small oasis of realness in Burt's downward spiral, like if she wanted they could swipe a fifth of vodka from the bar cart on their way out of the party, hop in her BMW back down the river to her East 82nd street apartment, and shack up for the rest of the weekend in the AC, just drinking, screwing (as they called it then), watching old movies on the late late show --and he'd never have to get his well-deserved comeuppance. It's easy! I've done it myself, had a girl in Cherry Hill who I sometimes miss and her parents were fun and had a pool. She smoked menthol and blew her hair out and had that accent but she was thrice the lady my more cosmopolitan ladies were... Watching Joan you can feel the way sex and drinks in an air conditioned room cures a weary hungover sunshine-infused soul. Seeing her you can feel the chill sunburned skin gets from cold from being in pools and drying in the sun, the dusky chlorine and nicotine smell washing through the AC, like a cozy womb of air.

 Burt, forget about that little young blonde and go where the flavor is!

And that's my advice in a nutshell to all future Swimmers: Never go back to your wife, the kids, the house. Never get out of the goddamned pool. There's no such thing as ugly women, only sober men. So grab the first boat that comes along, as long as she's just hot enough you don't have to hide, but not enough that you get jealous. Never get out of that boat, Burt. Absolutely goddamned right.

THE SWIMMER doesn't get out of the boat, yet it still sails without him. The age of the great white sharky novel sinks down to the bottom as he pounds the iron doors of his golden playpen like its the locked steerage gate on the Titanic. His future is all drank up and pissed out into the rose bushes. His key don't fit that lock on his door. Another mule has long ago kicked down his stall.

Released in 1968, THE SWIMMER is like the last conservative helicopter out of hippie-swarmed Saigon. Burt swims backwards through the evacuees like a sperm whale who alone realizes there's a prophylactic net ahead. But there's no going back, oh Connecticut Paragon! Your day of slapping polyester asses and drinking the world into a hazy welcome mat is over. Swim to the sea, Cheever of Men, if it will have you. Just know there's lots of other sharks fighting over every last late-night co-ed spring breaker, and for far too long you've coasted in a sea of spoon-fed chum. Are your teeth sharp? Is your skin hard? Is your mouth a little weak? Are you smart? Or would you rather be a duck? Then quack, Mr. Merill. Quack! 

NOTES:
1. My dad's subscribed to TIME all my life. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, I read it every week, especially Richard Corliss' film reviews, and carbonizing my prepubescent hormones via its pictures of Cheryl Tiegs and Charlie's Angels - back in the days before I knew what sex was or that my arousal was 'dirty'. I hate it but it's a part of me, that's a fact. Nowadays I'm too leftist to tolerate its petit-bourgeois slantiness and Effexor has left me a happy eunuch! 
2. Postscript - it turned out to be my mom's - Kenmure CC, SC - 2/15 - RIP Nancy Kuersten xoxxox