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

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain is a collection of Russian stories compiled by George Saunders, who also adds his own commentary. The book was published by Bloomsbury Press in 2021.

George Saunders is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He has published five short story collections, including 1996’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline; a collection of essays entitled The Braindead Megaphone; and a novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2017.

Summary

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain discusses eight stories by four 19th century Russian writers: three by Anton Chekhov, two by Nikolai Gogol, and one each by Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy. The stories are followed by Saunders's commentary, analyzing the stories and offering related advice for writers.

The book is framed by two essays by Saunders. “We Begin” describes how Saunders came to these stories, what he has learned from them and what he hopes to teach the reader. He has long taught the stories as a graduate writing instructor at Syracuse University; “[f]or a young writer, reading the Russian stories of this period is akin to a young composer studying Bach” (10). He has picked these particular stories because they offer a means of talking about “the short story form itself” (10). Although written in a very different time period than our own, they are nevertheless “resistance literature […] the resistance in the stories is quiet, at a slant, and comes from perhaps the most radical idea of all: that every human being is worthy of attention” (10-11).

Chekhov's “The Cart” is about a provincial schoolteacher named Marya. Saunders often interrupts the story, asking simple questions: What do we know and not know, what do we expect to happen next, and what is our impression of the main character. In this way, Saunders focuses our attention on the story’s subtle narrative shifts and deepening of characterization. He cuts the story off near the end, asking the reader what they would think of the story if it ended here. In his “Afterthought,” Saunders suggests the reader do a similar exercise with the Hemingway story “Cat in the Rain.” He also posits the movie Bicycle Thieves as a model of subtle narrative escalation, with the director taking responsibility for “every aspect of every frame” (75).

Turgenev's “The Singers” is about a singing competition between two peasants in a poor rural pub. In his commentary, Saunders focuses on its seeming narrative unwieldiness. He suggests that it is the story’s very meandering quality that gives it force and energy, and speculates that this was the only way that Turgenev could write: “For Turgenev to get his energy level up above 1,000 [...] he had to admit that he wasn’t very good at integrating description and action. He had to plunge ahead, doing things his way, or die” (130). In his “Afterthought,” Saunders discusses the writing process. He believes that the writing process is similar to building elaborate block constructions with his children—in both cases, creating takes on a life of its own.

In Chekhov's “The Darling,” the central character is a woman named Olenka who has a constant need to be in love, and who bases the rest of her life around the current object of her love. Saunders cites this story in his commentary as an example of a “pattern story” (165). Olenka's need to be in love establishes the story’s pattern, while her changing love objects establish variations on this pattern, which keeps readers engaged. In his “Afterthought,” Saunders writes about the ways in which writing is like a literal conversation; in both cases, presence and attentiveness are required, and the other person can sense it if one participant is absent or stilted.

Tolstoy's “Master and Man,” about a peasant named Nikita and his master Vasili who get caught in a snowstorm, allows Saunders to discuss narrative causality. Each action in the story gives rise to the next. Saunders also discusses Tolstoy’s shifting of point of view: He moves from one character’s head to another within a few paragraphs, giving the illusion of God-like omniscience. Saunders believes that the story’s main question is not whether or not its two main characters survive the snowstorm, but whether Vasili, a limited selfish character, can change for the better. In his “Afterthought,”, Saunders admits to finding the character of Nikita overly simple, and suggests a writing exercise to make him more complex.

Gogol's “The Nose” is a surreal story about a petty official who loses his nose, which then becomes a more successful and higher ranking official. The story’s strangeness is not only due to its plot, but also to its Russian skaz-style narrator, who is clumsy and odd, but whose strangeness gives him access to a certain truthfulness and poetry. The story, in describing a surreal situation, shows the deep irrationality of life beneath a “consensus reality” (350). In his “Afterthought,” Saunders describes his own writing process, which also involves “following a voice” (390). It is important for a writer to follow their instincts from line to line, rather than worrying too much about a story’s overall organization.

In Chekhov's “Gooseberries,” the three main characters take a swim in a pond, which seems like an incidental part of the story; however, this activity reveals their different natures and subtly complicates a speech that one of the characters, an opinionated man named Ivan, makes later on. Saunders writes about the use of digression in this story, and how it adds to the story’s overall meaning: “[w]hat at first seemed like a digression is understood to be beautifully efficient” (423). In his “Afterthought,” Saunders considers how to balance editing with staying true to one’s own writerly preferences. He shows how a sample passage could be edited in several ways, according to what sort of writer is doing the editing.

Tolstoy's “Alyosha the Pot,” the shortest story in the book, is about a peasant boy named Alyosha, a cheerful, stoic character who endures unfairness and cruelty. Saunders uses the story as an occasion to discuss the power of omission. The reader has only occasional access to Alyosha’s thoughts, which raises questions about the value of goodness in a flawed world. In his “Afterthought,” Saunders examines the small but important connection between reader and writer: “Fiction [...] causes an incremental change in a state of mind [...] That change is finite but real” (483).

“We End,” the concluding essay in this book, is addressed to aspiring writers. Saunders asks writers to take whatever they find useful in his advice and commentary, and to discard the rest: “Because that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work” (485). The book ends with three writing exercises that Saunders has created for students.