Collectible Beer Steins

By Dave Schwab

Before Piatti there was Rheinlander.

Gone but far from forgotten, Rheinlander Haus restaurant, bar, gift and coffeeshop was a slice of Germany in La Jolla Shores for nearly 30 years.

Memories of the storied eatery, now Piatti La Jolla Italian Restaurant & Bar at 2182 Avenida De La Playa (and inbetween Gustaf-Anders, Swedish cuisine) resurfaced with the Feb. 6, 2012 death at age 83 of Ernest Kloeble.

A European immigrant, Kloeble co-owned and operated Rheinlander Haus from 1956 to 1984 with business partner Al Williams. During that time, Kloeble established a couple of important precedents in the San Diego restaurant industry.

“He was one of the first people to get outside seating in San Diego after fighting the health department, and one of the first privately owned San Diego restaurants to have a completely tiled kitchen, which was done so skillfully it was used as a model,” noted nephew Rudy Kloeble who grew up in his uncle’s restaurant serving Southern German cuisine. “He also was one of the first people on the West Coast to have German beer imported.”

Rudy Kloeble said his uncle was able to take outside dining one step further, securing a permit his last couple years in business to close down the street in front of the restaurant to have “great Octoberfests.”

Before Rheinlander was the Old Holiday Inn, which Rudy Kloeble said his uncle and Williams turned into “a landmark attraction.”

Rudy said Ernie was able to make good connections with German breweries that got his foot in their door and opened up other business opportunities.

“They gave him lots of mementos to sell,” he said. “He opened up a gift shop and sold beer steins, a few cuckoo clocks, different types of glassware and anything oriented toward food.”

Rudy Kloeble described Rheinlander as “authentic as you can get,” with lots of elaborate décor. “Ernie sold antiques on the side and some of his best pieces were displayed in the restaurant,” his nephew said adding, “People enjoyed that rich, old-fashioned-style.”

Rudy Kloeble said uncle Ernie also sponosored a number of immigrants who followed him out to La Jolla and became U.S. citizens. He added that was a big deal in those days since sponsors “were financially responsible” for those they sponsored for the first five years of their stay.

Ernest Kloeble sold Rheinlander but never retired.

“He was a living legend,” said Rudy Koeble. “He worked right up until the day he passed away. He had a nice bed and breakfast that he was still running down in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico.”

Hedy Lang, a good friend of Ernie Kloeble’s who was an employee of his and a lifelong patron, said he was “the most enormously generous person I’ve ever met.”

She said his restaurant reflected his warmth. “It was home to everybody that went there,” she said adding it was decorated throughout with paintings.

Lang said friends came from all over the world — Canada, Germany, South America — for Kloeble’s funeral.

Kloeble and Williams, said Lang, were also renowned for their charity.

“Ernie and Al used to go down to Tijuana to the orphanage or pick up kids on the street dressed in rags and take them shopping for clothes and toys,” she said. “It was just fantastic. Anybody who needed anything they always helped out.”

Lang said, “He never was negative, never complained. He’s going to be missed by a lot of people worldwide.”

Related posts:

1. Partial water shutdown in La Jolla Shores Jan. 5
2. Whitneys sue La Jolla planning group
3. Planning commissioners OK permits for Whitney’s La Jolla Shores project
4. Fall fest draws a crowd to La Jolla Shores
5. Green expo coming to the Cove

Short URL: http://www.lajollalight.com/?p=59085

Posted by Dave Schwab on Feb 21 2012. Filed under La Jolla, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Where there’s smoke, there’s usually a good beer — at least in my opinion.

Complex and full-bodied, a smoked or oak-aged beer will leave you rolling in a wave of intense flavors. Think Scotch, smoked Gouda or a really good slab of barbecued ribs. It’s something to be savored in small quantities and appreciated for what it can offer the palate.

Smoked beer is a great transition to get you from heavy, winter warmers to lighter spring styles. Finding the right balance can be a challenge. Brewers want to provide a hint of smoke, but not so much that drinkers feel like they are in a smoke room. The flavor should be subtle and assertive — enough to bring up memories of camping, grilling out and bonfires.

Taking a cue from Germany’s traditional Rauchbiers, a well-known style that infuses a distinct smoky flavor by using malted barley dried over an open flame, American craft brewers have grown fond of experimenting with the power of smoke.

Looking to expand your palette? Find these brews around town at spots like Stubbies & Steins, Tipple’s Brews or Gainesville House of Beer for an introduction to the style.

Swamp Head Brewery Smoke Signal Porter

An American-style porter that uses a generous amount of pale ale malt smoked with Alderwood, providing a slightly sweet smoke flavor to balance the hints of chocolate and roasted barley.

Swamp Head Brewery Chipotle Infused Smoke Signal Porter

Same intense smoky flavor as the regular Smoke Signal, this time with a kick of Chipotle pepper added to bring some spice.

Brooklyn Black Ops

Smooth, bourbon barrel-aged stout that combines toasty notes of wood with hints of chocolate, vanilla and roasted grains. After aging in bourbon barrels for four months, the brews are bottled flat and re-fermented in the bottle with Champagne yeast, giving each bottle a burst of carbonation. The perfect brew for a dessert or cigar night.

Victory Otto Ale

Brewed to create the perfect harmony between a smoky rauch style and a Belgian caramel malt, this dubbel has a crisp, lingering smoky finish.

Left Hand Oak Aged Widdershins Barleywine

Definitely an unexpected taste with this brew; all the hop and fruit notes of a normal American barleywine fold into a oak and malt-flavored taste reminiscent of a chocolate stout.

Want to learn more? Tipple’s Brews will host a smoke and oak beer tasting Monday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. For $25, you can sample 10 different smoke and oak beers, snack on hors d’oeuvres and go home with a new beer glass.

The beers included in the tasting range from Dogfish Head’s Burton Baton (a double IPA conditioned in French Oak) to the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Marzen (a smoked Marzen).

Call or stop by the store to reserve a spot.

Posts in Beer for Breakfast appear on Fridays. Follow @beer4breakfast on Twitter.

The 16th Annual Fremont Oktoberfest takes place on the first official days of autumn, September 21-23, 2012, in the heart of Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood.

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) February 12, 2012

Fremont Oktoberfest is Seattle’s fall tradition. Voted by USA Today, Orbitz.com and Bing.com as one of the top places to toast Oktoberfest, this three-day festival features a Tasting Garden, two stages with live music, Sunday Dogtoberfest activities and an Oktoberfest Village with a Kids Area and 5K Run.

The 16th Annual Fremont Oktoberfest takes place on the first official days of autumn, September 21-23, 2012, in the heart of Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood.

Fremont Oktoberfest hosts a 21+ Tasting Garden where guests can sample over 80 microbrews, German beers and wine. The Buxom Beer Garden, located inside the Tasting Garden, serves up microbrews in a macro glass – ½- and 1-liter souvenir steins. Various lounges and music stages provide guests with non-stop entertainment including the infamous Texas Chainsaw Pumpkin Carving Contest, Dog Modeling Contest, and Buxom Royalty Contest.

The Oktoberfest Village features its own by-the-glass beer garden, traditional German food booths, a free entertainment stage and a Kids’ area with Zucchini 500 races, pumpkin carving and Oktoberfest themed arts and crafts. The Oktoberfest Village is free and open to all ages.

The weekend also includes a Brew HA-HA of a run, the Fremont Oktoberfest 5K, complete with a beer belly division and appropriately ending at the Village Beer Garden. For those looking for a unique adventure, the Fremont Oktoberfest Street Scramble sends guests on a scavenger hunt to find the hidden treasures of the Fremont neighborhood.

Tickets go on sale August 13, 2012 at fremontoktoberfest.com and include admission, a 5oz commemorative tasting mug and five tasting tokens. 5oz beer tastes are one token each and additional tokens are available for purchase.

Fremont Oktoberfest is a benefit for the Fremont Chamber of Commerce funding local schools, art groups, community events and promoting Fremont as the “Center of the Universe.” More information about the Fremont Chamber of Commerce can be found at http://www.fremontseattle.com.

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/2/prweb9188143.htm

The 16th Annual Fremont Oktoberfest takes place on the first official days of autumn, September 21-23, 2012, in the heart of Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood.

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) February 12, 2012

Fremont Oktoberfest is Seattle’s fall tradition. Voted by USA Today, Orbitz.com and Bing.com as one of the top places to toast Oktoberfest, this three-day festival features a Tasting Garden, two stages with live music, Sunday Dogtoberfest activities and an Oktoberfest Village with a Kids Area and 5K Run.

The 16th Annual Fremont Oktoberfest takes place on the first official days of autumn, September 21-23, 2012, in the heart of Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood.

Fremont Oktoberfest hosts a 21+ Tasting Garden where guests can sample over 80 microbrews, German beers and wine. The Buxom Beer Garden, located inside the Tasting Garden, serves up microbrews in a macro glass – ½- and 1-liter souvenir steins. Various lounges and music stages provide guests with non-stop entertainment including the infamous Texas Chainsaw Pumpkin Carving Contest, Dog Modeling Contest, and Buxom Royalty Contest.

The Oktoberfest Village features its own by-the-glass beer garden, traditional German food booths, a free entertainment stage and a Kids’ area with Zucchini 500 races, pumpkin carving and Oktoberfest themed arts and crafts. The Oktoberfest Village is free and open to all ages.

The weekend also includes a Brew HA-HA of a run, the Fremont Oktoberfest 5K, complete with a beer belly division and appropriately ending at the Village Beer Garden. For those looking for a unique adventure, the Fremont Oktoberfest Street Scramble sends guests on a scavenger hunt to find the hidden treasures of the Fremont neighborhood.

Tickets go on sale August 13, 2012 at fremontoktoberfest.com and include admission, a 5oz commemorative tasting mug and five tasting tokens. 5oz beer tastes are one token each and additional tokens are available for purchase.

Fremont Oktoberfest is a benefit for the Fremont Chamber of Commerce funding local schools, art groups, community events and promoting Fremont as the “Center of the Universe.” More information about the Fremont Chamber of Commerce can be found at http://www.fremontseattle.com.

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Lacey Lybecker
Bold Hat Productions
206-633-0422
Email Information

  Local beer enthusiasts and history buffs  looking to whet their appetite have a full bevy of  events to choose from starting this weekend.

 Steins-in-the-Rhine, an annual fundraiser featuring Cincinnati beer memorabilia,  will kick off Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Garfield Suites downtown and run until 5 p.m.

Cincinnati’s rich German brewing heritage left a hidden treasure trove of beer steins, signs, cans, bottles and other antiques in living rooms, basements and attics across the region, according to the event host, Over-the-Rhine Brewery District Community Urban Redevelopment Corp.

The event provides free appraisals for authentic beer steins by members of the Thoroughbred Stein Verein, a chapter of Stein Collectors International. Appraisals are also available for all other types of historic Cincinnati-area beer memorabilia by local breweriana experts.

Antique steins and other antiques will be displayed, with many items available for sale. Items brought to the event can be sold or consigned.

Garfield Suites will also have beer available, including Christian Moerlein Emancipator Dopplebock.

Steins-in-the-Rhine is an annual fundraiser for the Brewery District, and a lead-up event to Bockfest 2012 — slated for March 2-4.  The annual beer festival includes tours of Over-the-Rhine’s historic breweries, including lagering cellars and tunnels deep below the city streets.

Tickets are on sale for tours, which run March 3 and 4. Proceeds from Bockfest tours go to support the work of Brewery District (CURC) in historic Over-the-Rhine and West End.

For more information visit www.bockfest.com

Posted in: Development, Industry Events, Residential Real Estate

MARCO ISLAND — If time and space could be transformed, guests of “Oktoberfest in February” could have been seated in the dining room of a riverboat exploring the German Rhine.

The transformation Thursday of Marco Island Yacht Club’s upstairs to a pleasure craft had the signatures of Jill and Ewout de Vries and the staff of America Travel. Steins of imported beer never fell empty. Marc-Allen Barker of Viking River Cruises roamed among diners in traditional lederhosen.

The yacht club’s dining staff complemented the occasion with a buffet even the Deutsche would envy: Bratwurst and knockwurst with sauerkraut, veal shanks, hasenpfeffer (German rabbit stew), spaetzle, hot German potato salad, and abundant pastries and cake.

The evening’s crowning event for its 126 dinner guests was a vicarious trip to foreign lands via the magic of screen. Diners were visually transported to prestigious destinations by the largest riverboat company of its kind on the globe.

“Our cruisers spend more time at their destination and less times aboard ship,” said Darren Dolan, director of business development for Viking River Cruises. “That’s because we take you to the heart of a country rather than skimming its coast.”

Riverboat travel varies from ocean line cruising in remarkable ways. River vessels meander through scenic countryside rather than steaming long distances between destinations. Onshore, the group of fewer than 200 passengers blends into towns and hamlets without interrupting the daily flow of local inhabitants.

Most excursions are included in the cost of the trip, so small groups can explore regions of interest; and in some cases, meet the boat downstream rather than trudge back to the same dockage. All passengers are seated for dinner at 7 p.m., but dress is always casual.

“I tell guests to leave their tuxedos at home,” Dolan said. “We want them to be comfortably immersed in the destination’s culture.”

Local color is never far away. Viking brings town musicians and cultural activities onboard in the evenings for guests’ entertainment. One of Dolan’s favorite venues is sailing through the Wachau Valley on the Danube River.

“The chef prepares local dishes and we bring kegs of local beer and locally produced schnapps onboard,” Dolan said. “We also hire accordion players as you sail down the Danube surrounded by castles and vineyards.”

Dolan praised America Travel for its spot as their No. 1 seller of riverboat cruises. De Vries admitted that he has traveled on every riverboat itinerary.

Viking will be christening four state-of-the-art ships in Amsterdam next month.

“The new ships will be different,” said de Vries. “The corridor will be moved slightly to one side allowing larger cabins with balconies. Suites will have two rooms, a living room and bedroom with French balconies and an extra veranda.”

A special suite at the back of the ship allows a 270-degree view of the countryside.

For those who enjoy exotic travel, de Vries will be escorting a trip to the

Mekong Delta in southwestern Vietnam in October and has four cabins remaining.

Viking sails primarily in Europe on the main rivers of France, Russia, Germany, Austria and Portugal. In Asia, Viking sails in China, Vietnam and Korea. Bookings are generally open for travel from March to December. The company will have 27 riverboats in service by the end of the year.

Riverboat cruises are typically 8-23 days. An 8-day sailing would take visitors to four countries while a 23-day trip could reach as many as nine. Two popular destinations are the 8-day gastronome sailing through the south of France and a northern France trip that includes the beaches of Normandy, Dolan said.

For more information on Viking River Cruises or for reservations, call America Travel at (239) 642-6616.

The era is Prohibition.

Speakeasies are common, and bootleggers quench the country’s thirst for that banned substance, alcohol.

It’s a fascinating piece of American history, an element known here in Lycoming County as well as the nation at large.

When two bottles of Prince Farrington’s Prohibition-era moonshine whisky recently landed on the auction block, local historian Robert E. Kane Jr. wasn’t going to let the opportunity to own one slip through his fingers. Another local man with a passion for historic preservation, Edward Lyon, was the successful bidder on the second bottle.

“This item really appealed to me when it came up for sale,” Kane said, “This item is something he actually touched and was actually his.”

Kane, president and CEO of Divine Providence Hospital, explained the bottle was a valuable addition to his collection of “a couple hundred” bottles, which can have their roots traced back to the area.

The “life-long bottle collector” found himself with the opportunity to be only the bottle’s fifth owner since it was first filled with its illegal contents during Prohibition.

“This passed through very few owners from Prince Farrington to me,” Kane said.

Farrington, the bottle’s original owner, was a bootlegger – one who produced and sold liquor illegally during the years of Prohibition – in Lycoming County.

The second owner of the bottle of moonshine was Harry Lewis Williams Jr., a driver who would deliver Farrington’s illegal packages to the customers. Kane said Williams once spent six months in prison because he was caught with the alcohol.

Williams’ son was the next owner. Kane said the son was a “teetotaler” – someone who doesn’t drink alcohol – and didn’t want anyone to find the bottle in his house when he died, so he gave it to a close friend before it wound up at auction.

Kane said like the journey from Farrington to him, the bottle itself, tells a story of the years of Prohibition.

“This is a pre-Prohibition whisky bottle,” Kane said, “And Prince Farrington used any bottle he could get his hands on.”

Though producing, selling and consuming alcohol was illegal during Prohibition – 1920 to 1933 – the bottle doesn’t hide what it contains, clearly stating it as a whisky bottle on its label.

Kane explained since it’s a pre-Prohibition bottle, the label was made before alcohol was banned.

“Of course he would never put his own labels on a bottle.”

Kane’s bottle collection includes medicine bottles, soda and beer bottles but Farrington’s bottle will add something extra to it.

“Prince Farrington was so much a part of local history, whether it is about illegal activities or the many good things he did, it’s important to the local heritage,” Kane said.

Kane’s interest in local bottles caused him to create his own display of products from a Williamsport brewery.

“One of the things I’ve collected … is memorabilia from Flock’s Brewery,” he said.

The company – started by Henry Jacob Flock – was in business from 1856 to 1954 and located where Lycoming College is today.

“Much of this collection came out of the Kast Hotel in Newberry,” Kane said of the display.

Kane’s collection includes beer steins, mirrors, advertising displays, ash trays and foam scoopers – a tool used in bars to knock the foam off of a glass of beer.

“You have everything from punch sets to lighted clocks,” he said.

In 1943, Flock’s was sold to a group of investors that brought new products to the company.

“They actually bottled things such as soft drinks and it was known as Bald Eagle Soft Drinks and Ales,” he said.

From a local bootlegger to a brewery, Kane’s collection is more about stories of the area than just a piece of glass.

“I think it all tells the story of progression and evolution of not only Williamsport but of the United States at that time,” he said.

VACAVILLE (CBS SF) – It was instant karma for Vacaville firefighter Louis Jones when he responded Thursday morning to a medical call at a mobile home on Sunset Drive in Vacaville.

A home on Bishop Drive that Jones had been preparing to rent out was burglarized overnight last week. He discovered the theft on Friday.

A 4-wheel dirt bike, washer and dryer, tools, lawn mower, wood chipper, power tools, hand tools and personal items were stolen.

When he arrived at the mobile home this morning in response to a medical call, he noticed another missing item that looked familiar—a plastic, bright yellow wedge used to stabilize cars during extrications was being used as a doorstop on the gate to the mobile home.

“I recognized it right away. I became suspicious right away,” Jones said.

His suspicions were confirmed when inside the mobile home was the missing Whirlpool washer and dryer he intended to leave to the new tenants of his rental home.

Construction work was underway on the mobile home’s deck, Jones said.

Being a firefighter and medical responder, he kept his cool, he said. The man in the mobile home was transported to VacaValley Hospital.

“We took care of our business and left,” Jones said.

Ricky Mankini (Vacaville Police Dept.)

As Jones and the other responders were leaving, they encountered 47-year-old Ricky Mankini, who also lived at the mobile home park, according to Vacaville police Officer Debi Lopez.

“We didn’t confront him. I called the police,” Jones said.

Vacaville police contacted Mankini at VacaValley Hospital where he was visiting his housemate, Jones said. A search of Mankini’s vehicle revealed more stolen items and Mankini was arrested for possession of stolen property and booked into the Solano County jail, Lopez said.

Jones returned to the mobile home where he identified the property that was missing from his rental home.

“The only thing we recovered was the washer and dryer, a lawn mower, some paint, hinges, paint brushes and keepsakes—beer steins with firefighting related artwork,” Jones said.

The recovered property is worth about $2,300, Lopez said.

“Ninety percent of the stuff is still missing,” Jones said. He estimates it’s worth between $8,000 and $10,000.

Jones, a firefighter for 20 years, 10 of them with the Vacaville department, offered his perspective about his stolen property.

“It’s just stuff. It’s not like it’s a life-or-death situation,” he said.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Readers of the news of the weird may recall a contest sponsored some years ago by the Guinness beer company in which first prize was a pub in Ireland — title and deed, stools, steins and taps. You needed only to compose a clever essay, throw a few darts and demonstrate that you could pull the perfect pint. Those looking for escape — and unable to find it in the bottom of their mugs stateside — had their opening.

Swap Murphy’s Irish Stout for Guinness, and you’ll find, if not the full premise of Matt Bondurant’s haunting third novel, certainly the precipitating event. “The Night Swimmer” introduces us to an idealistic young couple from Vermont who take over the Nightjar, a moldering pub in a lonely corner of County Cork.

Fred and Elly Bulkington fell in love as graduate students in English literature. He harbors vague ambitions of becoming a novelist, while she longs to hone her skills as a deep-water swimmer (think of Lynne Cox and the English Channel). The isolation of this part of Cork, and particularly Roaringwater Bay, would seem to suit them both, but Bondurant suggests more ominous possibilities. Fred likens himself and Elly to the couple in “Revolutionary Road” — except, he adds, with empty confidence, “we actually make it; . . . we follow through and make it happen.”

Yet “The Night Swimmer” appears less influenced by Richard Yates than by John Cheever, whose journals supply epigraphs for each of its three sections — lines like “When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.” In fact, a comparison to Cheever’s most famous story, “The Swimmer,” is unavoidable. Neddy, Cheever’s privileged suburbanite, evinces an “inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools,” to which Bondurant’s Elly (whose name is clearly an echo) replies: “My natural state seemed to be damp and clammy, my hair stiff with salt or lake scum. It was my only true source of satisfaction, when I felt most complete.” Like Cheever’s, Bondurant’s characters are children masquerading as adults, unable or unwilling to brave life’s challenges.

Bondurant’s previous novel, “The Wettest County in the World,” is a model of tone and rhythm, and here too his prose teems with evocative detail and surprising metaphor, capturing the fervid mania of a couple spinning out of control. With Elly always in the water, Fred becomes hostage to a lifeless pub, ostensibly writing his novel but in reality scribbling bits of unconnected musings, a kind of madman’s commonplace book. (“You know when you have the image of something in your mind, but when you go to do it you can’t make it right? It just doesn’t match up? There is only one problem in this life and this is it.”)

Unfortunately, Bondurant isn’t satisfied with dissecting Fred and Elly’s increasingly troubled marriage. Rather, as his story progresses, it balloons with thuggish turf wars and streaks of magic realism: Cheever by way of Mario Puzo and Jorge Luis Borges. The mash-up of genres and an overabundance of half-sketched characters and cryptic plot turns threaten to neuter an otherwise powerful book.

Still, Bondurant’s lyricism redeems “The Night Swimmer,” especially in several passages describing Fred and Elly’s life before Ireland, a holiday gathering with Elly’s parents and a duck hunt with Fred’s father that throw light on a world the couple is soon desperate to re-enter. “We would start over, start a family,” an increasingly despondent Elly tells herself, admitting that “the sudden thought of a child filled me with a glorious kind of relief, like I was released from a net, like I was saved from drowning.” It’s a callow fantasy. Similar, you might say, to dreaming about what you’d do if you won the top prize in an audacious contest.

Readers of the news of the weird may recall a contest sponsored some years ago by the Guinness beer company in which first prize was a pub in Ireland — title and deed, stools, steins and taps. You needed only to compose a clever essay, throw a few darts and demonstrate that you could pull the perfect pint. Those looking for escape — and unable to find it in the bottom of their mugs stateside — had their opening.

Swap Murphy’s Irish Stout for Guinness, and you’ll find, if not the full premise of Matt Bondurant’s haunting third novel, certainly the precipitating event. “The Night Swimmer” introduces us to an idealistic young couple from Vermont who take over the Nightjar, a moldering pub in a lonely corner of County Cork.

Fred and Elly Bulkington fell in love as graduate students in English literature. He harbors vague ambitions of becoming a novelist, while she longs to hone her skills as a deep-water swimmer (think of Lynne Cox and the English Channel). The isolation of this part of Cork, and particularly Roaringwater Bay, would seem to suit them both, but Bondurant suggests more ominous possibilities. Fred likens himself and Elly to the couple in “Revolutionary Road” — except, he adds, with empty confidence, “we actually make it; . . . we follow through and make it happen.”

Yet “The Night Swimmer” appears less influenced by Richard Yates than by John Cheever, whose journals supply epigraphs for each of its three sections — lines like “When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.” In fact, a comparison to Cheever’s most famous story, “The Swimmer,” is unavoidable. Neddy, Cheever’s privileged suburbanite, evinces an “inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools,” to which Bondurant’s Elly (whose name is clearly an echo) replies: “My natural state seemed to be damp and clammy, my hair stiff with salt or lake scum. It was my only true source of satisfaction, when I felt most complete.” Like Cheever’s, Bondurant’s characters are children masquerading as adults, unable or unwilling to brave life’s challenges.

Bondurant’s previous novel, “The Wettest County in the World,” is a model of tone and rhythm, and here too his prose teems with evocative detail and surprising metaphor, capturing the fervid mania of a couple spinning out of control. With Elly always in the water, Fred becomes hostage to a lifeless pub, ostensibly writing his novel but in reality scribbling bits of unconnected musings, a kind of madman’s commonplace book. (“You know when you have the image of something in your mind, but when you go to do it you can’t make it right? It just doesn’t match up? There is only one problem in this life and this is it.”)

Unfortunately, Bondurant isn’t satisfied with dissecting Fred and Elly’s increasingly troubled marriage. Rather, as his story progresses, it balloons with thuggish turf wars and streaks of magic realism: Cheever by way of Mario Puzo and Jorge Luis Borges. The mash-up of genres and an overabundance of half-sketched characters and cryptic plot turns threaten to neuter an otherwise powerful book.

Still, Bondurant’s lyricism redeems “The Night Swimmer,” especially in several passages describing Fred and Elly’s life before Ireland, a holiday gathering with Elly’s parents and a duck hunt with Fred’s father that throw light on a world the couple is soon desperate to re-enter. “We would start over, start a family,” an increasingly despondent Elly tells herself, admitting that “the sudden thought of a child filled me with a glorious kind of relief, like I was released from a net, like I was saved from drowning.” It’s a callow fantasy. Similar, you might say, to dreaming about what you’d do if you won the top prize in an audacious contest.