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

George Saunders has been teaching his MFA students at Syracuse University a course on the Russian short tale for the past twenty years. He gives us a glimpse into that class in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, sharing some of the lessons he and his pupils have learned together over the years. The seven articles in this book, which are paired with well-known short stories by Gogol, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Chekhov, are meant for anybody who is curious in the nature of fiction and why it is more important than ever in these uncertain times.

"We're going to enter seven painstakingly constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn't fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here?” writes Saunders in his introduction. What was the purpose of our presence here? What ought we to cherish? In any case, what is truth, and how can we tell when it exists? He takes a scientific but approachable approach to the stories, using them to illustrate how narrative works, why we become engrossed in a story and why we don't, and what core values a writer should uphold. Saunders reminds us that writing is both a technical skill and a means of developing a fresh sense of wonder and openness about the world.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain delves deeply into the study of reading comprehension, the workings of the mind throughout the reading process, and the ways in which creating and reading stories enable real human connection.