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.
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Popular highlights in this book
We might imagine structure as a form of call-and-response. A question arises organically from the story and then the story, very considerately, answers it. 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.Highlighted by 487 Kindle readers- 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.Highlighted by 441 Kindle readers
- That’s really all a story is: a limited set of elements that we read against one another.Highlighted by 438 Kindle readers
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| 'The best short story writer in English' - Time | ‘A joy. Effortlessly stylish, funny and smart’ – Daily Mail | ‘What a warm, kindhearted and radical piece of writing’ – Max Porter | ‘The best book you’ll read this year’ – New York Times | ‘Saunders is an astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic and funny' Thomas Pynchon | ‘We’re lucky to have him’ – Jonathan Franzen | ‘You do not read Saunders' stories so much as watch them detonate on the page in front of you' New Statesman |
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Sublimely beautiful writing
What a joy to read this book. It’s sublime. Saunders takes you through a small collection of Russian short stories and explores the craft of writing in minute and spellbinding detail. There are stories by Chekhov, Tolstoy and Gogol included, and each story is printed in full so that you can first of all read it and reach your own conclusions and then compare your reactions to Saunders’ own.There are fascinating insights into the writers’ lives. For example, did you know that Gogol was obsessed with noses, afraid of leeches abs could touch the top of his nose with his tongue? Or that his nickname at school was “the mysterious dwarf”? I didn’t either. Did you know Tolstoy had 13 children? (His poor wife). There’s so much humour, too. I laughed out loud.There are also delightful comments about life in general which seem to speak to me: ‘Power is held by shitheads; virtuous people suffer unfairly. Happy, fortunate people, to whom everything has been given, preach positivity to sad, unlucky people, who were given nothing. We push the button labelled ‘I Need Help’ and one of those boxing gloves comes out and hits us in the face as the machine lets out a comic farting noise.’Although I didn’t always agree with the author’s evaluations and deconstructions of the texts, I found his insights and analysis totally fascinating, and the experience of reading this book has made me: more aware of what I need to do to improve my writing (basically, revision and causation); more aware of the body of Russian literature that I need to read; burn with desire to attend a series of lectures with the author and engage with his teaching in greater depth. Which isn’t likely to happen. But that’s life.
Top reviews from United Kingdom
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2022
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 June 2021
What a joy to read this book. It’s sublime. Saunders takes you through a small collection of Russian short stories and explores the craft of writing in minute and spellbinding detail. There are stories by Chekhov, Tolstoy and Gogol included, and each story is printed in full so that you can first of all read it and reach your own conclusions and then compare your reactions to Saunders’ own.
There are fascinating insights into the writers’ lives. For example, did you know that Gogol was obsessed with noses, afraid of leeches abs could touch the top of his nose with his tongue? Or that his nickname at school was “the mysterious dwarf”? I didn’t either. Did you know Tolstoy had 13 children? (His poor wife). There’s so much humour, too. I laughed out loud.
There are also delightful comments about life in general which seem to speak to me: ‘Power is held by shitheads; virtuous people suffer unfairly. Happy, fortunate people, to whom everything has been given, preach positivity to sad, unlucky people, who were given nothing. We push the button labelled ‘I Need Help’ and one of those boxing gloves comes out and hits us in the face as the machine lets out a comic farting noise.’
Although I didn’t always agree with the author’s evaluations and deconstructions of the texts, I found his insights and analysis totally fascinating, and the experience of reading this book has made me: more aware of what I need to do to improve my writing (basically, revision and causation); more aware of the body of Russian literature that I need to read; burn with desire to attend a series of lectures with the author and engage with his teaching in greater depth. Which isn’t likely to happen. But that’s life.
There are fascinating insights into the writers’ lives. For example, did you know that Gogol was obsessed with noses, afraid of leeches abs could touch the top of his nose with his tongue? Or that his nickname at school was “the mysterious dwarf”? I didn’t either. Did you know Tolstoy had 13 children? (His poor wife). There’s so much humour, too. I laughed out loud.
There are also delightful comments about life in general which seem to speak to me: ‘Power is held by shitheads; virtuous people suffer unfairly. Happy, fortunate people, to whom everything has been given, preach positivity to sad, unlucky people, who were given nothing. We push the button labelled ‘I Need Help’ and one of those boxing gloves comes out and hits us in the face as the machine lets out a comic farting noise.’
Although I didn’t always agree with the author’s evaluations and deconstructions of the texts, I found his insights and analysis totally fascinating, and the experience of reading this book has made me: more aware of what I need to do to improve my writing (basically, revision and causation); more aware of the body of Russian literature that I need to read; burn with desire to attend a series of lectures with the author and engage with his teaching in greater depth. Which isn’t likely to happen. But that’s life.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 March 2023
Top reviews from other countries
Kaushik Roy
Insightful. Wonderful. Immensely helpful.
Reviewed in India on 25 September 2023
Hazel P
Rekindle my love to Russian literature and works like a self-help book
Reviewed in Australia on 2 July 2021