"The Geometry of Love" is a work of short fiction by John Cheever which first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on January 1, 1966.
When a delivery truck passes him bearing the name EUCLID'S DRY CLEANING AND DYEING on its side panel, Mallory has an epiphany: he decides to formulate an escape from his troubled life by way of Euclidean geometry.
He proceeds to represent his existence in terms of theorems and postulates, allowing him to assert a measure of control over the chaos of his daily affairs.
Obtaining his slide rule and notebook from the nurse he devises "a simple, geometric analogy between his love for Matilda and his fear of death."
[5] The New Yorker's leading editor William Maxwell, who had for years championed Cheever's literary output, declined to accept "The Geometry of Love" for publication.
[8] Cheever enumerates these in the following passage: As Mallory continued with his study and his practice, he discovered that the rudeness of headwaiters, the damp souls of clerks, and the scurrilities of traffic policemen could not touch his tranquility, and that these oppressors, in turn, sensing his strength, were less rude, damp and scurrilous…[9]Literary critic Lynne Waldeland suggests a more sinister element arises when this Euclidean "magic"[10] is summoned: The story is primarily an entertainment, a fabulous account of the danger of applying scientific principles too effectively to the human world.
The basic idea - that Euclidean geometry can ameliorate a bad marriage - is preposterous, and whether intentionally or not, the episodes are strung together with a conspicuous lack of coherence.