A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

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.”

Hospitatlity 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 hosptitable 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 intersting 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 scandels attached to this or that respected and influential figure. But the thoughts are still percolating.

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