A few years ago, I was hanging out up in Canada with
Pasha Malla, and he was recommending Canadian writers who are basically the shit but not really known or published down here in the States, and one of the guys he was raving about was
Lee Henderson. In fact, now that I think about it, that discussion was probably the precursor to Pasha's guest-edited
Canadian Hobart. He pulled
The Broken Record Technique off one of his bookshelves and handed it to me, and then he had some work due for something or other, so while he did that I just sat in his apartment and read probably a good half of the book and really loved it. Later that day, when we were out walking around downtown Toronto, I picked up a copy of the book for myself at a used bookstore. At some point I lost said book and so bought another the next time I was up in Canada, but then months later that was one of the things in my backpack when it got stolen. Which means, now that I am thinking about it, I am off to buy another copy online as soon as I finish this post.
Anyway, what got me thinking about the book again was one of the stories in particular, "The Runner After Cheever," because of it basically being a "cover." I don't know that it was my favorite story in the collection, per se (there is so much great stuff in it), but it is definitely one of the stories that has stuck with me the most over the years. At the time when I read the story, I don't think I'd yet read Cheever's "The Swimmer" though I was familiar enough with it by reputation to have a basic idea of its plot. In Henderson's version, a guy makes it a personal goal to "run" from one end of the city to the other, by visiting every fitness center along the way and running on every treadmill. (It has been years since I read the story and due to the aforementioned loss and theft, I can't reference it now, so I may be getting this slightly wrong, but that's the gist.) It follows the basic premise that Cheever wrote and twists is just enough, and then becomes its own, quite powerful and kickass story.
So, thinking about this story again, I went back and reread Cheever's "The Swimmer." (Like Nabokov's "A Guide to Berlin," this was
originally in the
New Yorker, which means you can find it online if you are a subscriber. Or, even if you aren't a
New Yorker subscriber, you can actually find it online
here.) Everyone has already read this story, right? Man. It is so great, right from the beginning:
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."
One of the other things I noticed in this most recent reading is how well he constructs his path home, via the "river" Lucinda. Here is almost every mention of the river:
He seemed to see, with a cartographer's eye, that string of swimming pools, that quasi-subterranean stream that curved across the county. He had made a discovery, a contribution to modern geography; he would name the stream Lucinda after his wife.
...
Making his way home by an uncommon route gave him the feeling that he was a pilgrim, an explorer, a man with a destiny, and he knew that he would find friends all along the way; friends would line the banks of the Lucinda River.
...
The Bunkers' pool was on a rise and he climbed some stairs to a terrace where twenty-five or thirty men and women were drinking. The only person in the water was Rusty Towers, who floated there on a rubber raft. Oh, how bonny and lush were the banks of the Lucinda River
...
A pair of lifeguards in a pair of towers blew police whistles at what seemed to be regular intervals and abused the swimmers through a public address system. Neddy remembered the sapphire water at the Bunkers' with longing and thought that he might contaminate himself—damage his own prosperousness and charm—by swimming in this murk, but he reminded himself that be was an explorer, a pilgrim, and that this was merely a stagnant bend in the Lucinda River.
I had more to say about the story, but the more I think about it... what can I say beyond just, "read the story." And if you've read it before, read it again.
Also, one last note: the story was made into a movie in 1968 with Burt Lancaster (and even Joan Rivers in a small role!). Elizabeth and I watched the movie a few years ago and... holy shit is it crazy! For reals. Netflix that mess. I don't even know how to describe it without just resorting to bafflement.
-aaron
thanks for the very kind review of the story in my collection. I love writing cover stories. My story for Hobart was a cover of a famous scene from Antonioni's film L'Avventura, but I set it in Vancouver, upon the arrival of a Paris Hilton-like waif.
Posted by: Lee | December 29, 2010 at 07:04 PM