He is increasingly concerned that his memory is beginning to deteriorate, on which he depends to compose his short lyrical poems based largely on detailed reminiscences.
When Bascomb finds himself writing the word "F- - k" repeatedly, he takes his housekeeper's advice to make a pilgrimage to a local shrine where visitors might have their thoughts purified.
An elderly, white-haired man emerges from the forest, unashamedly strips off his clothing, and steps eagerly under the falls, crying out joyfully in the frigid waters.
[2][3][4][5][6] Literary critic Lynne Waldeland declares that "The World of Apples" may be "the best story in the volume- carefully imagined, effectively paced, beautifully expressed.
—John E. O'Hara in John Cheever: A Study of the Short Fiction (1989)[8] With respect to this "manifesto", Waldeland observes that the protagonist, Asa Bascomb, liberates himself from his compulsive sexual fantasies by invoking the pantheon of deceased literary figures who have influenced him as a writer in his youth.
[9] Literary critic Samuel Coale notes that Cheever's "linear precision of style" comports with Asa Bascomb's struggle to achieve spiritual enlightenment: Step by step the prose moves carefully, almost gingerly, as if recounting some ancient rite or ceremony…the tone and lyric grace of the prose are in complete agreement with the tone and lyric renewal of Asa Bascomb's spirit.
"[10]Coale concludes: "The deceptive simplicity of the story reveals the triumph of Cheever's fictional art and his lyric vision, for both are finally inseparable.