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A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
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About This Book
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.
Reviews
"Makes use of the class on the Russian short story that Saunders has been teaching for the last twenty plus years at Syracuse University ..."
"Suffice to say, the hairs on the back of my neck were alert."
"maybe I'm biased as a former English major, but A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is refreshing, warm and educational in the best sense of the word."
"How necessary, at our particular moment ..."
"It does not, however, carry the heavy weight of an academic tome."
"A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, is a distillation of what he tries to impart to his students."
"a close, marvelling, grateful and precisely articulated reading of seven short stories, included in the book, by Russian masters of the nineteenth century ..."
"Saunders is an engaging guide, earnest almost to a fault at times, but the enthusiasm is clearly genuine and ultimately winning."
"Admirers of Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) and Saunders' equally imaginative short story collections will discover the full scope of his passion for and knowledge of literature in his deeply inquisitive, candid, funny, and philosophical analysis of seven stories, each included here, by his Russian mentors ..."
"Saunders' commentary on the stories reads like the coffee-stained notes of a professor fond of the subject—and his students."
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