I’m enjoying my trip through George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. It’s a book version of a class he teaches on writing short stories, and it has just the right mixture of useful advice and personal opinion. He has selected a handful of Russian short stories and uses them to illustrate different techniques or truths about writing. Even though I have yet to be converted to a lover of Russian literature, and I often disagree with him (Saunders, the cart story is brilliant but it is still not a story), his insights have given me some useful vocabulary for tackling the dreaded act of editing.
Naming a thing, after all, really does give one a kind of power over it.
Obviously his main point is writing, but I think a lot of people would find this book useful as a primer on reading. In fact, he talks about writing as the ability to read one’s own work as a reader and notice where the writing falls short of one’s readerly expectations. If you were intereted in taking Literature classes, but short on time or oppurtunities, I would suggest this as the next best thing to an in-person book club.
I didn’t fully realize it when I first started this book, but last year I read a short story by Saunders for a writing class – a story published in The Atlantic titled “The Moron Factory.” Reading this book I feel like I understand that story so much better. After all, I now know a lot more about Saunders – what he thinks is funny, what he thinks is beautiful. I wonder if my favorite authors are my favorites becasue they seem so knowable, having read so much of their writing. Because I understand them when they do this or that. We are communal creatures – is it any wonder if part of our pleasure and engagement in reading is tied to our feeling of connection to the author?
This falls right in line with Saunders’ tenet that “a story is a frank, intimate conversation between equals.” He proposes that to facilitate this conversation authors must respect their reader, have the courage to offer our actual selves (and not a fake, glossy version of ourselves), and be present in the conversation. “We might understand revision as a way of practicing relationship; seeing what, when we do it, improves the relationship between ourselves and the reader.”
Hospitality is a word I hear about a lot in the circles I’m in. Writers, they say, should be hospitable to their readers. Saunders seems to fit right in with that assertion, giving it flesh and a practical bent. But as with most things being hospitable takes practice. Might one not be a better writer if they attempt a little more hospitality in their personal life, to the people around them?
Saunders has some interesting observations on Tolstoy and the relationship between an author’s persona (the values they exhibit in their writing) and their actual personality (the values they actually live by). It seems pretty relevant to the current shift in our approach to history; to the continual revelation of scandals attached to this or that respected and influential figure. But the thoughts are still percolating.
The Nose was a weird story, and I’m not sure if it actually counts as a good one when translated. However, I throughly love the idea of skaz, of an narrator whose unreliability shows just how wacky this world really is. As chance would have it, I watched an episode of Skipbeat after reading this section and, reader, that show is all over skaz. It’s full of scnes where it’s unclear what is really happening: Unkind words physically pierce people’s hearts, metaphors modify reality, emotions reach out and restrain. It’s a lot of fun. Artistically, it’s a bit like March Comes in like a Lion, although different in everything from style to tone to genre. March is not, I don’t think, skaz. It doesn’t alter reality so much as use its meduium (anime again) to highlight how our emotions and assumptions seem to alter reality. The difference between theses two stances is fascinating, and anime is a really fun medium to explore it in.
The Hitchhikers Guide, and other Douglas Adam books, are not straight skaz either. The narrator is mostly neutral, and the focus character is mostly “sane,” and it’s everyone and everything else – universe included – that is bonkers. Earth gets destroyed? Mice start talking? The insanely augmented spaceship is unable to make a cup of tea? Everyone ecept Author Dent just assumes it’s Tuesday. The Phantom Tollbooth has similarities in its absurd use of language and wacky nonsensical world. But, like March, it’s use of unreality highlights the beauty and logic in reality. Rather than saying “don’t other think it, life is crazy,” the Phantom Tollbooth urges one to think deeper, look harder, and strive to find rhyme and reason in all the confusion.
I would love to try to write some skaz, and I would love to write both kinds of it. The pure skaz, that shows how crazy this world is, and the flipped skaz which uses absurdity to show how real reality is. How solid and dependable (though, yes, not fully expected), if we only step out into it, out of the comfort of our own perceptions. I find the difference between these two approaches really interesting.
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