This book is a delight, and it’s about delight too. How necessary, at our particular moment ... I love the warmth with which he writes about this teaching ... This kind of reading (one of the best kinds, I’m convinced) tracks the author’s intentions—and missed intentions, and intuitions, and instinctive recoil from what’s banal or obvious—so closely and intimately, at every step, through every sentence ... All this makes Saunders’s book very different from just another 'how to' creative writing manual, or just another critical essay. In enjoyably throwaway fashion, he assembles along his way a few rules for writing ... reading...with this rich, close attention will mulch down into any would-be writer’s experience, and repay them by fertilising their own work eventually ... One of the pleasures of this book is feeling his own thinking move backwards and forwards, between the writer dissecting practice and the reader entering in through the spell of the words, to dwell inside the story.
... craft books tend to read like invitations to a kind of shared suffering. But if Saunders’ writing guide is no more helpful, it’s funnier and more open-hearted ... though he approaches the book with I’m-just-winging-it humility, he works in some pedagogy. His trick...is not to be so pedagogical about it. Rather than throw down diktats about plot, structure and characterization, he encourages readers simply to walk attentively through each story. Saunders invents shorthand to make the process less intimidating ... Saunders delivers some old-fashioned from-the-lectern close readings, with occasional forays into multiple translations to explicate certain word choices. But he bites off bigger chunks than an academic ... It’s persuasive in context. But...Saunders opens up the kinds of questions that defy answers ... When do you get to make messes and when is it best to avoid them? On such points, Saunders may be more honest than most writing teachers, but it’s where Swim is at its haziest ... if the only solution is for writers to figure it out for themselves, Saunders excels at motivating them to do the figuring.
[Saunders] is moved by an evangelical ardor where fiction is concerned, intent on how it can help us 'become more loving, more open, less selfish, more present, less delusional,' as he put it in a viral commencement speech. These particular hopes have never been more precisely, joyfully or worryingly articulated than in his new book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain ... I’m making the book sound revoltingly technical. It isn’t. Saunders lives in the synapses — he looks at all the minute and meaningful decisions that produce a sentence, a paragraph, a convincing character. He offers one of the most accurate and beautiful depictions of what it is like to be inside the mind of the writer that I’ve ever read — that state of heightened alertness, lightning-quick decisions ... The book might provoke comparisons to Nabokov’s classic lectures on Russian literature, first delivered at Cornell. But where Nabokov is all high-plumed prose and remove, presiding at his lectern, Saunders is at your elbow, ladling praise ... Here’s where I must admit that I can find myself in an occasional bardo of sorts about Saunders, torn between admiration and wariness. The breadth of his belief in fiction is inspiring — and suspiciously flattering to the reader ... Now, I’m as self-interested a champion of fiction as anyone, but such overstatement does the form no favors — at best it feels naïve, at worst, deeply solipsistic. Is the invasion of Iraq best understood as a 'literary failure,' as Saunders has written? Can racism be described as an 'antiliterary impulse'?
Part intro to Russian literature, part musings on craft, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is all pleasure ... It’s rich pickings ... Saunders’ commentary on the stories reads like the coffee-stained notes of a professor fond of the subject—and his students. Where the text sparkles in particular is in his attempts at articulating the mystery of the muse.
... 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. For me, the best non-fiction books — like the best teachers — open your eyes and engage you with personality and passion. And as Saunders takes us through six short stories by Russian masters, we learn to read differently. We slow down. We feel his passion. And we ask questions ... Don’t worry — A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is not a workbook with all questions and no answers. An experienced, generous teacher is leading you along. The subsequent five stories appear in full, followed by Saunders’ take on each one. This isn’t esoteric literary criticism or dry, mansplaining lectures. Saunders’ book will help you enjoy fiction more ... Months after reading an advance copy, the title has stuck with me — it’s such an evocative image (pulled from Gooseberries by Chekhov). And it really fits; the book is a splash in the face. You can dive deep or lie on your back and let the words wash over you.
Welcome to Man Booker Prize winner George Saunders’s classroom at Syracuse University ... As a reader (and perhaps an aspiring short story writer), you can audit the seminar for no credit (at no cost except for the price of the book in whatever format you choose), with his exemplary lessons and assignments ... The book is organized uniquely, like a syllabus. There are assigned readings of stories (included in the text), lectures on the narratives, and suggestions for writing exercises ... It does not, however, carry the heavy weight of an academic tome. Saunders often expounds with personal, sometimes witty, observations that blend the tone of literary criticism with that of life’s lessons ... Saunders is sometimes too self-deprecating in asides about his talents and skills ... He frequently disparages himself as a 'lesser writer.' He may not be a Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, or Gogol, but he is a George Saunders, and a damn good one ... these are minor nits to pick in an otherwise overwhelmingly constructive book, in which Saunders offers us an indispensable list of laws for writers ... Bottom line: Who is A Swim in a Pond in the Rain for? Anyone who reads and admires short stories or might aspire to writing one — or better ones.
George Saunders’ surprisingly affirmative new book is a bit like being taken around a literary museum by a curator. His Old Masters are Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol, and the book presents seven works by them, and then Saunders’ insights about them having taught a course on the Russian short story at Syracuse University for many years. That said, even these Old Masters knew a thing or twelve about suffering ... one doesn’t need a pandemic and a lockdown to find an excuse to return to these Russian masters, and it was certainly not without profit, interest and joy to re-read them. So the justification for the jacket price must be what Saunders brings to this. As one would expect, it is a very eccentric form of seminar.
At times Saunders's commentaries read like exactly what they are, dressed-up lecture notes — perhaps of limited interest to those not hell-bent on getting published in The New Yorker. Often he strains a little too hard to make it 'FUN!!' ... his strength as an interpreter lies in his non-academic approach. He reads, as Vladimir Nabokov advised, with his back, alert to the shiver down the spine. He interrogates his own responses, asks you for yours, never quite settles for an all-encompassing interpretation ... Suffice to say, the hairs on the back of my neck were alert.
... a true gift to writers and serious readers ... infectious enthusiasm and generosity of spirit ... On the surface, this may seem a dry endeavor. However, in Saunders’ hands it is anything but. His love of literature is palpable, and his obvious qualities as an artful teacher are on full display. Saunders takes a different tack with each story, sometimes providing pulse-by-pulse dissections, other times analyzing the building of character or even how the excesses of a story somehow manage to contribute to rather than detract from its greatness ... While the genesis of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain can be found in the creative writing classroom—and writers at any level of their careers will glean priceless pearls from nearly every page—the genius of Saunders’ book, and his clear intention in offering it up, is to elucidate literature for the engaged reader, deepening the reading experience. It is also a blueprint for a greater engagement with humanity.
Saunders, a former petroleum engineer, likes to disassemble and analyse, yet this is not a dry, technical guide on how to write ... he...communicates in plain prose much of what his students have taught him, as well as his own personal musings on life, art and death. Suffused with a wry humour, the essays are aimed at anyone interested in how fiction works ... His book is what every lover of pre-Revolution Russian literature needs close by: not an academic interpretation, but a reader’s companion. I was pleasurably absorbed from start to finish.
this volume serves as a mini-anthology of great Russian fiction from the 1830s to the 1900s ... Above all, the tales pay attention – visionary, transformative attention – to humble and slighted people who lead downtrodden lives ... Saunders loves these works like old friends who never let him down, and always have something new to say. He does his fair share of minute structural analysis, stripping the engines down to show us how they go. But his warmth, enthusiasm and homespun metaphors – all part of that 'writerly charm' – banish any sense of the chilly, mechanistic Fiction Lab. Wannabe short-story writers will no doubt learn a lot ... Fix a story’s formal problems of voice, or pace, or structure, Saunders argues, and you’ll expel moral – even political – shortcomings from it too ... Russian speakers will also worry that, for much of the book, Saunders says little about the translations that he cites. The word choices, the sentence flows, the nuances of voice and tone, that add to the effects he examines depend here on the stories’ Anglophone interpreters ... Never mind: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain generates more fun, more wit, more sympathetic sense, than we have any right to hope for from a 400-page critical study.
This is no history of 19th-century Russian literature; the Booker Prize-winner is clear that he neither reads Russian, nor studies its literature systematically ... Yet the illogic is deliberate, the stories chosen because the author loves them as much (if not more) than English-language texts. They also, in his view, offer unique insights not just for short-story practitioners, but for anyone seeking to understand how reading affects us and why it is important ... an appealing and original synthesis. More practical and playful than formalist analysis, it also probes exactly how narrative techniques make us more alert, attentive and sympathetic in reading books and the world around us ... We thankfully avoid truisms about the Russian soul, and instead see how these four writers arranged their stories in such a way as to reveal how complex and fallible anyone, and life in general, could be.
...it is not the typical how-to writing guide. The closest comparison might be Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer from 2006. But while Prose focuses on close reading for craft techniques, Saunders aims for something larger: what stories do to us, how and why ... As Saunders takes us deep into the workings of each story, he explores what fiction can do for readers: how it can provide structures to expand and alter our thinking about our lives and worlds ... With each story, he gently encourages us to question our own biases and prejudices, imagine what the writer might have intended and consider other possible scenarios. He dives into existential and epistemological questions about how we understand and accept various versions of truth and joy and why we seek them in the first place ... Think of it like taking a walk around a favorite neighborhood, park or trail with a dear friend. You walk together, and this friend points out — with genuine delight and insight — the aspects that move and enliven them. The honesty, energy and earnestness are beyond infectious; they change your very relationship with these places so that you see them, with a fresh and clear vision, as vital to your very existence. You open up to let them shape your being and your way of thinking with a new curiosity and joy.
... billed as a master class in how to read and write, is effectively two books in one: seven classic Russian short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol paired with funny, lively, profound essays by Saunders explaining their art, craft and enduring appeal ... the best possible guide to have on this invigorating tour through FictionLand because although he thinks like the MacArthur 'genius' that he is, he talks like the guy sitting next to you at the bar.
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 ... An invaluable and uniquely pleasurable master course and a generous celebration of reading, writing, and all the ways literature enriches our lives.
... [a] thrilling literary lesson ... Once we become accustomed to reading like he reads, we proceed through the stories with great joy, anticipating even further delights with his explications to follow.
