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from Part I - Ageing and the Good Life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2022
In this essay I explore Frank Perry's film The Swimmer (1968), which is based on John Cheever's 1964 story of the same name. The film, I suggest, is a profound exploration of middle age. Ned Merrill, the central character of the film, is in a state of crisis brought on by the way in which – itself typical of middle age – his past is catching up with him. I explore his flight from self-knowledge, his desire to hang on to the past and his efforts to reinterpret his past according to the view of himself that he would like to have. I suggest that he is lost in the time of his life and that this dream-like dislocation of time is central to any understanding of the ethics of middle age.
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