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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 Hardcover – January 12, 2021
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LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Town & Country, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Thrillist, BookPage • “[A] worship song to writers and readers.”—Oprah Daily
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.
- Reading age1 year and up
- Print length432 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions8.6 x 3.7 x 11.8 inches
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication dateJanuary 12, 2021
- ISBN-101984856022
- ISBN-13978-1984856029
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
“This book is a delight, and it’s about delight too. . . . [A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is] very different from just another ‘how to’ creative writing manual, or just another critical essay. . . . One of the pleasures of this book is feeling [Saunders’s] 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.”—The Guardian
“Saunders discusses each story’s structure, energy flow, the questions it raises, and how “meaning is made,” embracing both technical finesse and the mysteries at creation’s core. . . . An invaluable and uniquely pleasurable master course and a generous celebration of reading, writing, and all the ways literature enriches our lives.”—Booklist (starred review)
“A master of contemporary fiction joyously assesses some of the best of the nineteenth century.”—Kirkus Reviews
“[A] true gift to writers and serious readers . . . With infectious enthusiasm and generosity of spirit, Saunders delves into seven stories that he calls the ‘seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world.’ . . . 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’s 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.”—BookPage
“Superb mix of instruction and literary criticism . . . Saunders’s generous teachings—and the classics they’re based on—are sure to please.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The subtitle to this exhilarating and erudite work of non-fiction by the Booker Prizewinning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December is: “In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life.” In it, one of the greatest short story writers of our time draws on his own love of Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol—and on his joy in teaching them to his MFA students at Syracuse University. The result is a worship song to writers and readers.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Thoughts on “In the Cart”
Years ago, on the phone with Bill Buford, then fiction editor of The New Yorker, enduring a series of painful edits, feeling a little insecure, I went fishing for a compliment: “But what do you like about the story?” I whined. There was a long pause at the other end. And Bill said this: “Well, I read a line. And I like it . . . enough to read the next.”
And that was it: his entire short story aesthetic and presumably that of the magazine. And it’s perfect. A story is a linear-temporal phenomenon. It proceeds, and charms us (or doesn’t), a line at a time. We have to keep being pulled into a story in order for it to do anything to us.
I’ve taken a lot of comfort in this idea over the years. I don’t need a big theory about fiction to write it. I don’t have to worry about anything but: Would a reasonable person, reading line four, get enough of a jolt to go on to line five?
Why do we keep reading a story?
Because we want to.
Why do we want to?
That’s the million-dollar question: What makes a reader keep reading?
Are there laws of fiction, as there are laws of physics? Do some things just work better than others? What forges the bond between reader and writer and what breaks it?
Well, how would we know?
One way would be to track our mind as it moves from line to line.
A story (any story, every story) makes its meaning at speed, a small structural pulse at a time. We read a bit of text and a set of expectations arises.
“A man stood on the roof of a seventy-story building.”
Aren’t you already kind of expecting him to jump, fall, or be pushed off?
You’ll be pleased if the story takes that expectation into account, but not pleased if it addresses it too neatly.
We could understand a story as simply a series of such expectation/resolution moments.
For our first story, “In the Cart,” by Anton Chekhov, I’m going to propose a one-time exception to the “basic drill” I just laid out in the introduction and suggest that we approach the story by way of an exercise I use at Syracuse.
Here’s how it works.
I’ll give you the story a page at a time. You read that page. Afterward, we’ll take stock of where we find ourselves. What has that page done to us? What do we know, having read the page, that we didn’t know before? How has our understanding of the story changed? What are we expecting to happen next? If we want to keep reading, why do we?
Before we start, let’s note, rather obviously, that, at this moment, as regards “In the Cart,” your mind is a perfect blank.
In the Cart
They drove out of the town at half past eight in the morning.
The paved road was dry, a splendid April sun was shedding warmth, but there was still snow in the ditches and in the woods. Winter, evil, dark, long, had ended so recently; spring had arrived suddenly; but neither the warmth nor the languid, transparent woods, warmed by the breath of spring, nor the black flocks flying in the fields over huge puddles that were like lakes, nor this marvelous, immeasurably deep sky, into which it seemed that one would plunge with such joy, offered anything new and interesting to Marya Vasilyevna, who was sitting in the cart. She had been teaching school for thirteen years, and in the course of all those years she had gone to the town for her salary countless times; and whether it was spring, as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or winter, it was all the same to her, and what she always, invariably, longed for was to reach her destination as soon as possible.
She felt as though she had been living in these parts for a long, long time, for a hundred years, and it seemed to her that she knew every stone, every tree on the road from the town to her school. Here was her past and her present, and she could imagine no other future than the school, the road to the town and back, and again the school and again the road.
• • •
Now your mind is not so blank.
How has the state of your mind changed?
If we were sitting together in a classroom, which I wish we were, you could tell me. Instead, I’ll ask you to sit quietly a bit and compare those two states of mind: the blank, receptive state your mind was in before you started to read and the one it’s in now.
Taking your time, answer these questions:
1. Look away from the page and summarize for me what you know so far. Try to do it in one or two sentences.
2. What are you curious about?
3. Where do you think the story is headed?
Whatever you answered, that’s what Chekhov now has to work with. He has, already, with this first page, caused certain expectations and questions to arise. You’ll feel the rest of the story to be meaningful and coherent to the extent that it responds to these (or “takes them into account” or “exploits them”).
In the first pulse of a story, the writer is like a juggler, throwing bowling pins into the air. The rest of the story is the catching of those pins. At any point in the story, certain pins are up there and we can feel them. We’d better feel them. If not, the story has nothing out of which to make its meaning.
We might say that what’s happened over the course of this page is that the path the story is on has narrowed. The possibilities were infinite before you read it (it could have been about anything) but now it has become, slightly, “about” something.
What is it about, for you, so far?
What a story is “about” is to be found in the curiosity it creates in us, which is a form of caring.
So: What do you care about in this story, so far?
It’s Marya.
Now: What is the flavor of that caring? How, and where, were you made to care about her?
In the first line, we learn that some unidentified “they” are driving out of some town, early in the morning.
“The paved road was dry, a splendid April sun was shedding warmth, but there was still snow in the ditches and in the woods. Winter, evil, dark, long, had ended so recently; spring had arrived suddenly; but neither the warmth nor the languid transparent woods, warmed by the breath of spring, nor the black flocks flying in the fields . . .”
I’ve bolded the two appearances of the word “but” above (and yes, I phrase it that way to avoid saying, “I bolded the two buts above”) to underscore that we’re looking at two iterations of the same pattern: “The conditions of happiness are present, but happiness is not.” It’s sunny, but there’s still snow on the ground. Winter has ended, but this offers nothing new or interesting to . . . and we wait to hear who it is, taking no solace in the end of this long Russian winter.
Even before there’s a person in the story, there’s an implied tension between two elements of the narrative voice, one telling us that things are lovely (the sky is “marvelous” and “immeasurably deep”) and another resisting the general loveliness. (It would be, already, a different-feeling story, had it started: “The paved road was dry, a splendid April sun was shedding warmth, and although there was still snow in the ditches and the woods, it just didn’t matter: winter, evil, dark, long, had, at long last, ended.”)
Halfway through the second paragraph, we find that the resisting element within the narrative voice belongs to one Marya Vasilyevna, who, failing to be moved by springtime, appears in the cart at the sound of her name.
Of all of the people in the world he might have put in this cart, Chekhov has chosen an unhappy woman resisting the charms of springtime. This could have been a story about a happy woman (newly engaged, say, or just given a clean bill of health, or a woman just naturally happy), but Chekhov elected to make Marya unhappy.
Then he made her unhappy in a particular flavor, for particular reasons: she’s been teaching school for thirteen years; has done this trip to town “countless times” and is sick of it; feels she’s been living in “these parts” for a hundred years; knows every stone and tree on the way. Worst of all, she can imagine no other future for herself.
This could have been a story about a person unhappy because she’s been scorned in love, or because she’s just received a fatal diagnosis, or because she’s been unhappy since the moment she was born. But Chekhov chose to make Marya a person unhappy because of the monotony of her life.
Out of the mist of every-story-that-could-possibly-be, a particular woman has started to emerge.
We might say that the three paragraphs we’ve just read were in service of increased specification.
Characterization, so called, results from just such increasing specification. The writer asks, “Which particular person is this, anyway?” and answers with a series of facts that have the effect of creating a narrowing path: ruling out certain possibilities, urging others forward.
As a particular person gets made, the potential for what we call “plot” increases. (Although that’s a word I don’t like much—let’s replace it with “meaningful action.”)
As a particular person gets made, the potential for meaningful action increases.
Product details
- Publisher : Random House
- Publication date : January 12, 2021
- Edition : Later prt.
- Language : English
- Print length : 432 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1984856022
- ISBN-13 : 978-1984856029
- Item Weight : 1.53 pounds
- Reading age : 1 year and up
- Dimensions : 8.6 x 3.7 x 11.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #156,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

George Saunders is the author of nine books, including Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the inaugural Folio Prize (for the best work of fiction in English) and the Story Prize (best short-story collection). He has received MacArthur and Guggen-heim fellowships and the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.
georgesaundersbooks.com
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Customers find the book genuinely interesting and entertaining, with a fascinating take on great writers that provides new insights into their own writing. Moreover, the book analyzes Russian short stories in depth, and customers appreciate its conversational style and intellectual tone. Additionally, they value the book's humor, pacing, and explanations, with one customer noting how it creates deep empathy with the protagonist.
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Customers find the book readable and interesting, particularly appreciating its examination of short stories and novels. One customer describes it as a master class in reading more deeply, while another notes its noble vision of literature.
"...It gives us a thrill, and this thrill-at-truth keeps us reading. In a story entirely made up, it’s actually the main thing that keeps us reading...." Read more
"Really great book! This is a must read in my opinion." Read more
"...I like the book, but I’m left with the thought that I’m glad I didn’t spend the time and money to attend his graduate class...." Read more
"Good reading. Good analysis. Great teaching!" Read more
Customers appreciate the writing advice in this book, describing it as a masterclass that provides fascinating insights into great writers and offers new perspectives on their own work.
"...walked me through seven short stories written by the famous Russian writers of the 19th century...." Read more
"...The process is interesting, and brings into better focus the classic Russian fiction he uses as a springboard...." Read more
"...And this is a beautiful book about beautiful and thought provoking stories and ultimately about life...." Read more
"...The author is a teacher of writing at Syracuse University...." Read more
Customers find the book insightful, describing it as a treasure trove of wisdom and one of the most inspiring books about creativity.
"...Prof. Saunders maintains it is a beautiful allegory to the singing contest in a village tavern...." Read more
"...to have been needlessly narrowed, it provides an expansive and compassionate alternative way to reflect on myself and others." Read more
"Good reading. Good analysis. Great teaching!" Read more
"...Thus we realize a perfect example of truth and beauty in the harsh reality of, on the one hand, her inescapable loneliness and, on the other, its..." Read more
Customers praise the book's analysis of Russian masters' short stories, noting that Saunders examines them in depth.
"...No need for overarching decisions; the story has a will of its own, one it is trying to make me feel, and if I just trust in that, all will be well,..." Read more
"...Russian masters, I learned so much about how I write and how I interact with stories...." Read more
"The very best thing about this book is what it does for the underappreciated short story, a form more demanding than any save the poem...." Read more
"...I loved that Saunders shared his methods and activities for analyzing these stories, while also encouraging his students to think about and consider..." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's conversational style, noting its intellectual tone and informal discussion format.
"...He says that in the process of writing this book, “My capacity for language is reenergized...." Read more
"...exercises and side-studies for the reader to do, such as reworking paragraphs of text...." Read more
"...Saunders comes at this from a writing perspective and his manner is conversational and unpretentious and enables a reader to follow along even if he..." Read more
"...Also, of particular value to me were insights, with word for word revision, into a possible process by which George himself progresses with a work,..." Read more
Customers find the book humorous and entertaining.
"...Like many great instructors, he knows how to use humor, and I adored the humor here. I laughed aloud throughout...." Read more
"...Not to mention that it is at times so, funny!..." Read more
"...He also shows a great sense of humor, but uses it sparingly. I've been writing short stories for online for about 20 years...." Read more
"Funny and informative, especially for a writer, actor or director. If you love to read READ this" Read more
Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, with one review noting how it is crafted with humility and care, while another mentions how it creates deep empathy with the protagonist.
"...(the language in which I think) gets richer, more specific and adroit...." Read more
"...much finer than we might have considered; and he creates deep empathy with the protagonist, so much so that we tend to lose ourselves in her life..." Read more
"What a remarkable book by, if this book is any indication, a remarkable person and remarkable teacher...." Read more
"...I now admire and love Chekov. I highly recommend this book to reading groups but also to writers and teachers...." Read more
Customers appreciate the explanations in the book, with one customer noting how it simplifies complex concepts and another mentioning it provides lots of insights.
"...That’s how this way of revising makes me feel. No need for overarching decisions; the story has a will of its own, one it is trying to make me feel,..." Read more
"...The process is interesting, and brings into better focus the classic Russian fiction he uses as a springboard...." Read more
"humble venture thru timeless stories and explanations (some) of how they can be understood. I found these dissections illuminating...." Read more
"...results in an immersive, conjoined experience, definitely not another dry tutorial (of course it isn't dry, you're in a pond, and it's raining!),..." Read more
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Beauty Lies In The Eye Of The Beholder
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2024Format: KindleVerified PurchaseThis review also serves as a “note to self” about the ways this book can and will make me a better writer.
It already has. Saunders held my hand and walked me through seven short stories written by the famous Russian writers of the 19th century. He prompted me to listen to my own reactions as I read, and that has helped me better understand the ways we writers pull readers into our made-up world and cause them to react.
I’m not a fan of short stories. After reading “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain,” I now believe that’s because I underestimated the art of the form. In a novel, character, place, and plot emerge over hundreds of pages. A short-story writer needs to accomplish their purpose in just a few. To do so, they use every trick in the book. Maybe I should read short stories more slowly and consciously.
Saunders makes it fun to detect writerly expertise in distilled short story masterpieces. These Russian guys – Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, and Turgenev – had to be particularly clever because they were taking swipes at the power structure – something I aspire to do in my own writing. Their characters were odd, their neighbors nasty, their towns dysfunctional, their stories fanciful. But every line served the purpose of the story – to cause the reader’s mind to end up in a place different than where it began.
A string of George Saunders pearls that I cherish:
• “In the first pulse of a story, the writer is like a juggler, throwing bowling pins into the air. The rest of the story is the catching of those pins.”
• “We might think of structure as simply: an organizational scheme that allows the story to answer a question it has caused its reader to ask. … If we want to make good structure, we just have to be aware of what question we are causing the reader to ask, then answer that question.”
• “A specific description, like a prop in a play, helps us believe more fully in that which is entirely invented. It’s sort of a cheap, or at least easy, authorial trick.”
• “Every structural unit needs to do two things: (1) be entertaining in its own right and (2) advance the story in a non-trivial way.”
• “(A linked pair of writing dictums: ‘Don’t make things happen for no reason” and “Having made something happen, make it matter.’)”
• “Chekhov once said, ‘Art doesn’t have to solve problems, it only has to formulate them correctly.’ ‘Formulate them correctly’ might be taken to mean: ‘make us feel the problem fully, without denying any part of it.’”
• “A story is always talking to you; you just have to learn to listen to it. … it wants to be its best self, and if you’re patient with it, in time, it will be.”
• “We know how things are and how they are not. We know how things tend to work and how they don’t. We know how things mostly go and how they never go. And we like it when a story agrees with our sense of how the world works. It gives us a thrill, and this thrill-at-truth keeps us reading. In a story entirely made up, it’s actually the main thing that keeps us reading. Since everything is invented, we read in a continual state of light skepticism.”
• “I feel qualified to say that there are two things that separate writers who go on to publish from those who don’t. First, a willingness to revise. Second, the extent to which the writer has learned to make causality. … It doesn’t come naturally, not to most of us. But that’s really all a story is: a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality.”
• “That’s all poetry is, really: something odd, coming out. Normal speech, overflowed. A failed attempt to do justice to the world. The poet proves that language is inadequate by throwing herself at the fence of language and being bound by it. Poetry is the resultant bulging of the fence.”
• “If I think of a story as something that has to convey a certain message, as a train that has to pull into a certain station at a certain time, and myself as the stressed-out engineer trying to make that happen—it’s too much. I freeze up and no fun is had. But if I imagine myself as a sort of genial carnival barker, trying to usher you into my magical black box, the workings of which even I don’t fully understand—that, I can do.”
• “I once heard someone say that “given infinite time, anything can happen.” That’s how this way of revising makes me feel. No need for overarching decisions; the story has a will of its own, one it is trying to make me feel, and if I just trust in that, all will be well, and the story will surpass my initial vision of it.”
Saunders speaks directly to writers. As the above pearls demonstrate, his writing is beautiful. But he feels our pain. He describes a period in his early writing in which he imitated Hemingway. But:
“… having gone about as high up Hemingway Mountain as I could go, having realized that even at my best I could only ever hope to be an acolyte up there, resolving never again to commit the sin of being imitative, I stumbled back down into the valley and came upon a little shit-hill labeled ‘Saunders Mountain.’ ‘Hmm,’ I thought. ‘It’s so little. And it’s a shit-hill.’ Then again, that was my name on it. … What we have to do at that point, I think, is go over, sheepishly but boldly, and stand on our shit-hill, and hope it will grow.”
I came away from this book feeling less a piker. I will write and I hope that I move my readers – however many. I likely will not achieve the heights of Tolstoy, but Saunders helped me see that isn’t the goal.
“… part of my job (part of your job) is to find new paths for the story form to go down; to make stories that are as powerful as these Russian stories but that, in their voice and form and concerns, are new, meaning that they respond to the things history has given us to know about life on earth in the years since these Russians were here.”
I am a teacher, as is Saunders. He validates my own belief that I learn as I teach. He says that in the process of writing this book, “My capacity for language is reenergized. My internal language (the language in which I think) gets richer, more specific and adroit. I find myself liking the world more, taking more loving notice of it (this is related to that reenergization of my language).”
And that’s exactly how I now feel, thanks to this book.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2025Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseReally great book! This is a must read in my opinion.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2025Format: KindleVerified PurchaseThrough the act of analyzing the Russian masters, I learned so much about how I write and how I interact with stories. I will be returning to this book for insight and guidance again and again.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2021Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseProf. George Saunders gives everyday folks a chance to share in how he teaches a masterclass on how to write short stories. The process is interesting, and brings into better focus the classic Russian fiction he uses as a springboard. I like the book, but I’m left with the thought that I’m glad I didn’t spend the time and money to attend his graduate class. He strains a bit to make his point of the stories’ greatness. The puzzling ending to Turgenev’s “The Singers” is a case in point. Prof. Saunders maintains it is a beautiful allegory to the singing contest in a village tavern. I think he greatly stretches the point, here and elsewhere. The epilogue is just a reminder of the banal and difficult life in the peasant village that was briefly interrupted by a beautiful moment in the tavern.
Saunders has an odd, but interesting, engineer’s approach to interpreting stories. He puts a lot of emphasis on structure, for example. There is even a two-page table explaining the elements of one story. I suspect Saunders dislikes Faulkner.
4.0 out of 5 starsProf. George Saunders gives everyday folks a chance to share in how he teaches a masterclass on how to write short stories. The process is interesting, and brings into better focus the classic Russian fiction he uses as a springboard. I like the book, but I’m left with the thought that I’m glad I didn’t spend the time and money to attend his graduate class. He strains a bit to make his point of the stories’ greatness. The puzzling ending to Turgenev’s “The Singers” is a case in point. Prof. Saunders maintains it is a beautiful allegory to the singing contest in a village tavern. I think he greatly stretches the point, here and elsewhere. The epilogue is just a reminder of the banal and difficult life in the peasant village that was briefly interrupted by a beautiful moment in the tavern.Beauty Lies In The Eye Of The Beholder
Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2021
Saunders has an odd, but interesting, engineer’s approach to interpreting stories. He puts a lot of emphasis on structure, for example. There is even a two-page table explaining the elements of one story. I suspect Saunders dislikes Faulkner.
Images in this review
- Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2025Format: KindleVerified Purchase. . . And this is a beautiful book about beautiful and thought provoking stories and ultimately about life. Particularly in these days when so much of life seems to have been needlessly narrowed, it provides an expansive and compassionate alternative way to reflect on myself and others.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2025Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseGood reading. Good analysis. Great teaching!
- Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2021Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseThe very best thing about this book is what it does for the underappreciated short story, a form more demanding than any save the poem. Perhaps it will encourage many who read only the novel to experience the gem-like beauty of the genre and become converts to its myriad merits.
The author is a teacher of writing at Syracuse University. He guides our reading through stories by the great Russian masters Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol, and Tolstoy, as if we were sitting with him in his classroom. By interposing various techniques of criticism throughout the stories - sometimes after just one page of the story, sometimes after two or more - he brings us to a much deeper understanding of the work than might have been gained by a typically less involved, more superficial reading. He shows us how to become responsive to author's purpose, even regarding the most seemingly trivial effects and apparently small details of the stories; he explains how the author raises our expectations only to dash them and then turn them into something much finer than we might have considered; and he creates deep empathy with the protagonist, so much so that we tend to lose ourselves in her life and in the difficulties and disappointments that attend it.
In Chekhov's story "In the Cart" we are able to apprehend the irresoluble loneliness of an unmarried school teacher in a rural district, a woman of apparently early middle age whose reflection on a once happy and loving life long since denied due to accidental misfortune yet achieves, in that very act of remembrance, a kind of epiphany which allows both herself and the reader to ultimately experience her small sense of personal triumph. Thus we realize a perfect example of truth and beauty in the harsh reality of, on the one hand, her inescapable loneliness and, on the other, its ultimate small redemption.
The full realization of the many nuanced components of this story that lead us to this depth of appreciation is much predicated on the careful and meticulous instruction of author George Saunders, our teacher here. As he says, "We really feel Marya's loneliness. We feel it as our own." Indeed we do. This surely exemplifies Chekhov's finest achievement. Our emotions are involved, but not in a cheap or manipulated way. There is no sentimentality here, but we are not emotionally unaffected. It is the kind of very real and very personal loneliness objectified not just through a piece of fiction, but through our own experience and observance of life as well.
I've always disliked thinking of reading as a strictly private activity. Reading is best when it is shared, for example, in a classroom of sympathetic readers. The author of this book makes us feel as though we are reading and learning in company with that sympathetic other, almost right beside us, teaching and guiding us as we go. It is almost that personal.
"We read to know we're not alone," a student once told author and teacher C.S. Lewis. And so this story by Chekhov clarifies. I can only surmise how helpful and attentive Mr. Saunders must be to his students' understanding of literature if he is able to so thoroughly enhance my own understanding through this book.
Top reviews from other countries
- K GreenReviewed in Australia on April 2, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars If you've read every other technical writing guide read this next
This is not a book I had heard a lot of people talking about. I found it through a friend's recommendation and adored it. I've read dozens of "how to write novels" etc books. Some good, some bad. I would consider this a Writing 102 course. You won't get the fundamentals but if you're looking to really step up your craft this is a really insightful and detailed explanation of what makes great stories great and how to construct something like that by walking you through why those stories work so effectively. The example stories discussed are included within too which made this a one stop shop!
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erikaReviewed in Italy on August 30, 2021
2.0 out of 5 stars A Swim in a Pond
Certo Saunders scrive bene. Ma questo libro è troppo testo scolastico, analisi che non mi piacciono. Non credo che gli autori di questi esemplari di narrativa hanno pensato come Saunders. Ho imparato qualcosa, ma non è un libro che leggerò una seconda volta.
- DenisReviewed in Canada on April 8, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous
Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseGeorge Saunders is one of my favourite contemporary authors. His work is incredibly wise, kind spirited, insightful, by turns heartbreaking and hilarious.
This book, specifically, couldn’t be more up my alley. I was born in the Soviet Union, but grew up in the West. I’ve had a strong affinity for the 19th Russian greats and studied Slavic Literature in university. Saunders is incredibly perceptive of both the form and the content of the selected stories and gives a great overview of the work of the period to anyone who wishes to engage with Russian classics but doesn’t want to commit to reading War and Peace.
I’ve always wanted to apply to attend the MFA program where Saunders teaches, as I couldn’t think of a better instructor of the craft. Alas, it is not in the cards for me. But this book (and his Substack, by extension) is the next best thing.
I’ve gifed a copy of this book to friends and family, and everyone has raved about how much they enjoyed it.
This is a perfect book for any aspiring writer, anyone interested in the art of the short story or those wishing to have an introductory overview of late 19th C Russian literature.
Thank you for writing this, George.
- sueReviewed in India on July 9, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable
Great stories and engaging commentary by George Saunders. Lots to think about, for aspiring writers to hone their craft.
- Martin JonesReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars A Deep Dive Into Writing
A Swim In The Pond In The Rain is a book version of George Saunders’ Syracuse University course on fiction writing, taught via a selection of short stories by nineteenth century Russian authors who serve as models for how it might be done.
I’ve read a number of ‘how to write’ books, and many of them warn against things like inconsistent point of view, or the liberal use of adverbs. A Swim In The Pond In The Rain is not so literal. It does have guidance on what makes a good story - give mind to escalation, try to make one thing cause another. But all this is sometimes contradicted by the Russian stories used as illustration. Both causation and escalation are, shall we say, enigmatic in The Nose by Gogol, where a man’s nose takes on a life if it’s own.
Even though it might seem that this book has no straightforward prescription, there is one piece of advice it gives consistently. A writer of fiction is often told to show not tell. This old chestnut is mentioned in passing, referring to Turgenev getting carried away with long physical descriptions in his story The Singers. But showing might not just be about descriptions. The Russian authors we read here are very good at showing complicated situations or characters from all angles, rather than telling a reader what to think about them. Chekhov’s Gooseberries, a story about the nature of happiness, has George commenting:
“The story is not there to tell us what to think about happiness. It is there to help us think about it. It is, we might say, a structure to help us think.”
Our Russian mentors show that good writing, in accepting contradiction, does not push readers to focus on one side of an argument to the exclusion of the other. To me, showing rather than telling, is a straight-forward way of describing the light touch, naturally tolerant nature of good fiction, providing for thought and reflection rather than a set of conclusions. In that sense, A Swim In The Pond In The Rain makes a case for one of the most familiar bits of writing advice - show don’t tell.
I really enjoyed this book. The Russian stories are wonderful, their exposition insightful, the tone friendly and supportive, conveying the excitement of a true enthusiast who is good at what he does. I valued the description of writing as a process of many decisions about a sentence, giving the best chance of arriving at a good sentence. This certainly chimed with me. Early in my writing efforts I thought the need for endless fettling meant that I was a hopeless incompetent - but the encouragement here to revise, revise, revise reminded me of the relief I felt coming across a remark of Somerset Maugham - he was talking to M.M. Kaye, at that point a struggling writer, who admitted to sometimes spending an entire day bogged down on one sentence. Maugham replied: “My dear young woman, that’s the only thing you’ve said to make me think you may be a novelist one day.”
Notice, finally that I have referred to George Saunders by his first name in this review. I wouldn’t have done that in an essay at Syracuse University where he works as a writing tutor. But the tone of this book is friendly. The author is someone leading a collaborative thinking effort, rather than telling us what to think. I had a similar tutor at university. She told us that Shakespeare, for all his fame as a great writer, is not actually saying anything. As with Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol, Shakespeare shows us complications but does not tell us what to think about them. All we can do is “maintain the paradoxes” as my tutor said. I didn’t think of that tutor as professor so-and-so, because for all her knowledge, she was more in the business of showing us things to think about, rather than professing - which is the fanciest form of telling. I always thought of her as Carol. Her classes came to mind as I read A Swim In The Pond In The Rain.