I’m a big fan of Mad Men and should have given these stories a shot earlier. They are absolutely fantastic. John Cheever is affectionately known as “the Chekov of the suburbs”, and he deserves the title. I have always been wary of short stories. Usually they try to cram too much information into such a short number of pages, that usually its all over before you’ve figured out who all the characters are. Cheever is not like that, these stories are incredibly readable. I am still thinking about “The Swimmer” in particular — a man lounging at his friends pool on a warm summers day decides he is going to swim home to his house via all his neighbors pools. As he swims, the story morphs into surrealism.