A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

In this prologue, Saunders introduces himself and outlines his approach to the stories in the collection. He came to these stories (and those of many other Russian authors) as a writer and a writing instructor at the MFA program at Syracuse University. He regularly reads short stories with his students, and regards 19th century Russian literature as rich and instructive.

His approach is humble, playful, and inquisitive: He does not present himself as a scholar or an intellectual, but rather as a “vaudevillian” (13). As a writer, he is interested in rhetorical and literary tricks other writes rely on. He encourages the reader to read actively—to ask questions of both the story and their own reaction to the story. He sees his role as teacher and commentator as “a finger pointing at the moon” (15): a Buddhist notion of teaching that is characterized by unobtrusiveness.

Saunders believes that the act of reading and writing fiction is implicitly political. It encourages deep, thoughtful responses rather than shallow reactions, and allows people to interrogate our “degraded era, bombarded by facile, shallow, agenda-laced, too rapidly disseminated information bursts” (12). The Russian writers in this collection were also writing during a time of political strife: “[T]his is a resistance literature, written by progressive reformers [.