The Swimmer- John Cheever

Quote 1:
“The bartender served him but he served him rudely. His was a world in witch the caterers men kept the social score, and to be rebuffed by a part time bar keep meant that he had suffered some loss of social esteem. Or perhaps the man was new and uninformed.”

John Cheever here is telling the reader how Neddy lives in the world of glamour and high-class society, where the bartenders are of lower status and everyone looks up to people like Neddy and his friends. This is also the point when Neddy finally realizes that something must have happened because people who usually look up to him are now rude to him and he doesn’t quite understand it. But Neddy isn’t quite ready to face that something must have happened and he denies it by placing the blame on the bartender.

Quote 2:
“It was not a serviceable stroke for long distances but the domestication of swimming had saddled the sport with some customs and in his part of the world a crawl was customary.”

Here he was talking about how a swimming stroke is not convenient but it was everyone in America does so everyone is custom to doing it. He is implying how most American people all conform to what society does and that everyone does the same thing. What they do may not be best way of doing it but since everyone else does it you automatically becomes accustom to doing it.