I have finished reading my fifth novel for 2023, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (in which Four Dead Russians Give us a Master Class on Writing and Life) by George Saunders. A birthday gift from the eldest sister, a person who always puts a lot of thought into her gifts, I looked forward to reading it. From the first lines, I was hooked. An esteemed Man Booker Prize-winning author, George Saunders has been teaching a Russian short story class at Syracuse University since 1997. The idea behind this book is to give us an idea of what he teaches about the short story. While the rest of us probably won’t ever make it into the class, (of the 6-700 applicants each year, they pick 6), we can get an insight into Saunders’ course through A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. It is written in the way of sharing short stories by Russian masters one at a time, then Saunders shows us step-by-step how the story is constructed, what the authors did, and why. We learn through the examples of the greats. What a cool concept.
George Saunders, astutely and with great humour (I guffawed aloud numerous times), proceeds to dissect each story written by Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, and Turgenev and to look in depth at how they work. Saunders writes, “The aim of this book is mainly diagnostic: If a story drew us in, kept us reading, made us feel respected, how did it do that?” It ticks an automatic “like” from me because – being a mostly self-taught writer – I’m always hungry for more, seeking new information and learning. However, I am sure A Swim in a Pond in the Rain would provide a captivating insight into the world of fiction for anyone, writer or not.
George Saunders (born in 1958, in Amarillo, Texas) is an American writer. He received a B.S. from the Colorado School of Mines in 1981 and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University in 1988. Married with two children, he wrote his first book, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a collection of dystopian stories published in 1996. More short-story collections followed, however, he is best known for his debut novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. The book became a bestseller and was awarded the Booker Prize in 2017. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a series of essays by Saunders on 19th-century Russian writers, published in 2021. Saunders’ Liberation Day is a collection of short stories he released in 2022.
I think there are some books where you can tell from the first few words that it is the “right fit” for you, and an eagerness is born within. I warmed to the innate optimism immediately in A Swim in a Pond. “There’s a vast underground network for goodness at work in the world,” Saunders writes. “A web of people who’ve put reading at the center of their lives because they know from experience that reading makes them more expansive, generous people.” My sentiments exactly.
There were things I learned about writing through the course of reading this novel. And there were many things I confirmed through reading it. For instance, Saunders echoed my understanding that writing a story doesn’t happen through planning but is created from almost dead words through the alchemy of editing. “The actual process, in my experience, is much more mysterious and beautiful and more of a pain in the ass to discuss truthfully.”
Parul Sehgal of the New York Times, in his piece, George Saunders Conducts a Cheery Class on Fiction’s Possibilities, said, “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.” Yes. I couldn’t agree more.
It was a master class, as promised. We learned about the need for efficiency, velocity, specificity, and escalation. “That’s all a story is, really: a continual system of escalation,” explains Saunders. “A swath of prose earns its place in the story to the extent that it contributes to our sense that the story is (still) escalating.”
There was a lot to praise. And I loved the idea of listening “to the wisdom of the novel” when editing, which Saunders describes thus, “Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. That’s what craft is: a way to open ourselves up to the suprapersonal wisdom within us.” Woohoo. What more could we need? A smart author putting into words some of the essences of the mystery that is fiction writing. Bliss.
The only question I have left is, will there be a second Master Class book?
My rating: (A totally rare) Five stars
Talk to you later.
Keep reading!
Yvette Carol
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‘A person can hardly read even a few lines of Tolstoy without feeling her interest in life renewed.’ ~ George Saunders
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