A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
'A Swim in a Pond in the Rain' by George Saunders is a masterclass on writing, reading, and life, based on his experiences teaching Russian short stories at Syracuse University. The book delves into seven iconic short stories by Russian masters like Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol, offering critical analysis and insights on character development, narrative construction, and plot escalation. Saunders encourages readers to find their own writerly voice through revision and close examination of literary works, emphasizing the importance of understanding the subtleties of storytelling.
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From The Publisher:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today.
“One of the most accurate and beautiful depictions of what it is like to be inside the mind of a writer that I’ve ever read.”—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University.
In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here?
What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster.
The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.
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1 comment(s)
This was an interesting book, I would say the selection of short stories, for the most part were great! I never took English classes as a means of being a better writer, only as a means of critical analysis. I would have appreciated these stories more as a discussion or maybe even a guided video essay compared to the book.
I enjoyed the cart and the subtle nuanced break down of how monotonous Marya's life was, how used to the bleak grey and the insults of fate that gets thrown at her. The page by page breakdown was tedious so I'm glad that the rest of the book opted for essays at the end. The Singers was wonderful in setting up the descriptions to create the parallel in the climax. I didn't understand the ending, but I'm glad there was some analysis accompanying it. I liked the evocative feeling of Gooseberries, it felt like the most complete/what I would want in a short story where we get a slight status quo shift. I can see why the book is named after what happens in Gooseberries. The feeling of Aloysha the Pot was rather sad but it didn't feel strong, same with Master and Man, but that was one of the criticisms brought up by Saunders anyways.
The only one that I disliked was the Nose. I think the leap of logic and the analysis accompanying it around creating statements to solidify the world were lacking. I disagree with the fact that people didn't want to question the issue about the nose, it just is improbable since nothing else about the world makes the nose becoming sentient easily acceptable enough to publish an advert about it.
If I read this to improve my writing, I think the exercises were thoughtful. The translation exercise is rather important with how Saunders doesn't know a lick of Russian. I think that would immediately remove important context from the story.
What can you read after
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain?
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