Hello, Writing Friends!
Welcome to my series, Best Books About Writing! I scoured the internet to dig up the very best of them, and believe me, it has given me much food for thought. Since last month’s book focused on English style rules, this month, I wanted to offer something for writers working with creative texts. Here is the next installment in the series:
Title: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
Author: George Saunders
Purpose: To show writers stories that illustrate effective techniques for improving artistic styling, to show teachers/editors/writing coaches how to encourage authors to enhance their art
Audience: Fiction or creative non-fiction writers, teachers/editors/coaches working with authors crafting artistic prose.
Publication Information: Random House: New York, 2021
This month’s author, George Saunders, a Booker prize laureate and professor of creative writing, uses classic Russian short stories to present different writing techniques to his master class in Syracuse’s MFA program, and this book is the published version of his class.
Each chapter contains the full text of a classic Russian short story, an essay highlighting a particular technique from that text, and an “Afterthought” on how to teach or learn that technique. The chapters include the following items:
· Ch. 1: “In the Cart” by Anton Chekhov, “A Page at a Time”
· Ch. 2: “The Singers” by Ivan Turgenev, “The Heart of the Story”
· Ch. 3: “The Darling” by Chekhov, “A Pattern Story”
· Ch. 4: “Master and Man” by Leo Tolstoy, “And Yet They Drove On”
· Ch. 5: “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol, “The Door to the Truth Might Be Strangeness”
· Ch. 6: “Gooseberries” by Chekhov, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain”
· Ch. 7: “Alyosha the Pot” by Tolstoy, “The Wisdom of Omission”
· Appendices: Exercises on cutting, escalation, and translation.
We 19th century Russian specialists have known for years that Russian short stories are the finest examples of short fiction, but it’s nice to have someone like Saunders, who is both a non-Russianist and an award-winning author, second that opinion. I used the chapter on Gogol’s “The Nose” when preparing a short story about my childhood, and I found Saunders’s essay, “The Door to the Truth Might Be Strangeness,” to be helpful in understanding how to establish the interior space of my characters. I came to Saunders’s book a little bit “inside-out”: I liked my story, and his essay helped me to understand what it did effectively. Even though this may not have been his intention when writing, it was still very helpful for my work.
I also read this book to help me with non-fiction writing since some of the techniques apply to creating lively and engaging essays as well. Since each chapter showcases a different feature of a story, the odds are good that there will be something useful in here, regardless of what type of artistic text you are working on. The appendix exercises are helpful and provide guidance about why cutting, escalation, and translation are so important. This allows the reader to learn a lot without actually attending Saunders’s class.
Those strapped for time may find this book requires too large an investment in order to comprehend Saunders’s advice. It worked for my purposes, but I was also familiar with the stories and could pick and choose what to read. I could imagine a reader getting frustrated if they want to find specific techniques and don’t have the patience to read the stories. Of course, as a former professor of Russian literature, I promise you that these stories are among the best ever written— they are a good investment of your time!
I play “requests”! If there are any books you think I should review, please drop me a line at dr.zhenya@empowerugroup.com.
Until next time, Friends, keep sharing your Magic with the world, and keep on writing!
Dr. Zhenya
