Anne Enright reads John Cheever's "The Swimmer."
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.
Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
This month we're going to hear John Cheever's story the Swimmer.
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.
The story was chosen by Anne Enwright, whose stories have been appearing in the New Yorker for more than ten years.
Her novel the Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize.
Hi, Anne.
Hi, Debra.
So you were born, you've lived most of your life in Ireland, and I'm sure you were too young when this story was first published, but were you reading american writers like Cheever in your formative years?
Well, I was reared on the irish short story, which is a wonderful tradition.
But then when I was in my teenage years, none of the irish short stories had any sex in them, and that was something I was looking for information on.
Much of my reading was guided by the need to find out what exactly happened and these information that wasn't available anywhere else.
But anyway, the american short story not only provided some information, but it was like a total breath of fresh air, because it seemed to be about freedom somehow the egotism of the writer and the wit of the writer, and the fact that things weren't pushed down all the time.
It wasn't always about people in narrow circumstances.
That was wonderful to me.
And where were you finding the American Writers Library?
Bookshops.
My sister brought home a book called the Naked Eye fictions for the seventies, and it had John Barth, Robert Coover, and it blew my little socks off.
Was there any Cheever in that one?