Lisbon and Hackersack in Cheever's "The Swimmer"

The opening of John Cheever's "The Swimmer" contains the following passage describing the atmospheric conditions on the Sunday that Ned Merrill undertakes his quasi-epic swim through the succession of swimming pools he names the "Lucinda River": "It was a fine day. In the west there was a massive stand of cumulus cloud so like a city seen from a distance-from the bow of an approaching ship-that it might have had a name. Lisbon. Hackensack" (603). Considering that there are well over two dozen critical analyses explicating nearly every detail of this richly allusive story, it is surprising that only one critic has commented on the possible significance of Cheever's citation of Lisbon and Hackensack, a rather odd coupling of seemingly unrelated cities.

William Rodney Allen, in his reading of "The Swimmer" as "a critique of compromised American ideals" (291), connects Ned Merrill with the Puritan settlers of America whose projected Biblical "city on the hill" was never realized, their vision of a New Jerusalem having been eroded by the gradual corruption of American values. Thus, according...