A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

In April of this year, Dana Stevens recommended the audiobook of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders as an audiobook on the podcast Culture Gabfest. I have literally been waiting for it to come in since then (almost eight months!).  

In this book, Saunders uses his decades of teaching short stories to MFA students to put together an absolutely fascinating little workbook for the rest of us. We hear seven short stories by Russian greats narrated by delightful actors, including Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, Glenn Close, and Rainn Wilson, and then Saunders walks us through a close reading of the text - why is this a great story? what is the author doing with this technique? how is it organized? why do you want to continue reading each sentence? 

Now, I did not love all the stories from the Russians. The Nikolai Gogol story "The Nose," "Gooseberries" by Anton Chekov, and "Singers" by Ivan Turgenev were very snooze-inducing and I had to keep rewinding to see if I had missed something. But! I was always very eager to get to Saunders' defense of the story and to see what his direction would be for me to see what did make the story a worthwhile addition to this collection. 

I am not the intended audience for this book. I am not a writer. I am not a creative writing teacher. But I am a reader and I like to think that I am a critical reader, so I found this sort of teacherly criticism to be so helpful, especially when it comes to thinking about what I did and did not like about writing. I imagine that it was like what it would be like in a really excellent writing workshop in college, only you're reading really great works of writing, not the substandard story Chris dashed off last night to meet the deadline. 

I also like that Saunders doesn't act like this is a handbook of how to write. His teaching philosophy seems to be about helping students discover their own style, rather than imitating others. Also, in a bit I've heard a lot in the past, the only way to get good at writing is to do writing!

I really enjoyed Saunders here, too. From his casually calling Tobias Wolff Toby to his self-deprecating bits about how his writing can't compare to the Russians to his own admission of having to rely solely on translation because he doesn't speak Russian, you really get the feeling that Saunders enjoyed writing this book. He loves the stories, he loves teaching, he loves seeing students develop their own styles and voices. Listening to someone talk about something they are enthusiastic about never goes wrong in my world. 

4.5/5 stars - Half a star docked because some of the stories were hard for me to get through. Huge recommendation for the audiobook, though. It's wonderful to hear Saunders talk about his writerly voice in his actual voice. 

Lines of note:

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? (timestamp 17:03)

Seriously, that IS the question, isn't it?

When we find our voice, what's really happening is that we're choosing a voice from among the many voices we're able to do and we're choosing it because we've found that of all the voices we contain it's the one, so far, that has proven itself to be the most energetic. (timestamp 3:45:16)

Do you associate good writing with energy? I've been pondering this ever since I listened to this book.

I like the person who I am in my stories better than I like the real me. That person is smarter, wittier, more patient, funnier. His view of the world is wiser. When I stop writing and come back to myself I feel more limited, opinionated, and petty, but what a pleasure it was to have been on the page briefly less of a dope than usual. (timestamp  4:05:13)

Do you have a separate Writer You and Actual You? I don't write fiction, so the Writer Me IS Actual Me. But if I wrote fiction, maybe this would be more distinct?

What transforms an anecdote into a story is escalation, or we might say when escalation is suddenly felt to be occurring, it is a sign that our anecdote is transforming into a story. (timestamp 4:52:16)

Saunders is apparently resistant to the word plot and talks about escalation a lot. I guess I never thought about plot = story, no plot = anecdote. This is clearly an indication that I should have taken some creative writing classes in college!

Of all the questions an aspiring writer might ask herself, here's the most urgent. What makes a reader keep reading? (timestamp 5:47: 56)

Back to this again. As much as Saunders tries to answer this question, it feels like the answer must be pretty ephemeral. 

But anyone can google how to hit a curveball and be informed that a hitter must identify the spin and hit the bad ones but let the good ones go by and so on and we can all be yapping about that on our way to the batting cage but once we get there we'll find that, nevertheless, some of us can hit the curveball and some of us can't.  (timestamp 12:45:00)

I generally like the way Saunders uses extended metaphors, but I was puzzled over this one. Is writing a physical skill like baseball? I mean, I could work forever and never be able to be a major league pitcher, right? But presumably I could become a better writer? Or do you think there is some innate thing that separates bad from good from great writers? 

If we decide that the story supports cheerful obedience, it does. If we decide that it opposes cheerful obedience, it does. Both readings feel radical. Both pose the question of how to deal with oppression. Then and now, in a world divided into haves and have nots, the most urgent one of all. But the story, in declining to answer, in obscuring the place where it might have answered, feels like it's not avoiding the question but irradiating it with increased intensity. (timestamp 13:53:21)

This is in defense of an ambiguous ending. I think ambiguous endings can be great, but not always. I wish he'd spent more time trying to create more generalizable lessons from the stories because while it may have worked in the story he was talking about, sometimes it wouldn't and what makes the difference? How do you articulate that difference?

Hat mentions:

Do we have to know about his one-sleeved coat, his pointed hat, the shape of his lips and nose? (timestamp 3:26:46)

He was wearing a straw hat and a white waistcoat... (timestamp 4:20:58)

...gave up wearing hat and gloves for good...(timestamp 4:29:02)

..with wide sideburns, wearing a three-cornered hat and with a sword... (timestamp 9:14:22)

He remembered quite well that the latter had a plumed hat...(timestamp 9:26:11)

...and his three-year-old son was reaching for his redoubtable three-cornered hat...(timestamp 9:38:37)