A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
- Author George Saunders
- Narrator BD Wong, George Saunders, Glenn Close, Keith David, Nick Offerman, Phylicia Rashad, Rainn Wilson, Renée Elise Goldsberry
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 12 January 2021
- Run Time 14 hours and 44 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Literary essays, Literature: history and criticism.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, read by George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, Glenn Close, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, BD Wong and Renée Elise Goldsberry.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
PICKED BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT, IRISH TIMES, SPECTATOR, TLS, NEW STATESMAN AND EVENING STANDARD AS A BOOK OF 2021
'A masterclass from a warm and engagingly enthusiastic companion' Guardian Summer Reading Picks 2021
‘This book is a delight, and it’s about delight too. How necessary, at our particular moment’ Tessa Hadley
________________
From the New York Times-bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves – and our world today.
For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously 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? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
PICKED BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT, IRISH TIMES, SPECTATOR, TLS, NEW STATESMAN AND EVENING STANDARD AS A BOOK OF 2021
'A masterclass from a warm and engagingly enthusiastic companion' Guardian Summer Reading Picks 2021
‘This book is a delight, and it’s about delight too. How necessary, at our particular moment’ Tessa Hadley
________________
From the New York Times-bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves – and our world today.
For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously 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? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.
Critics Review
A wonderful book … This book is a delight … I love the warmth with which he writes about this teaching, and agree wholeheartedly … All this makes Saunders’s book very different from just another “how to” creative writing manual, or just another critical essay … One of the pleasures of this book is feeling his own thinking move backwards and forwards, between the writer dissecting practice and the reader entering in through the spell of the words, to dwell inside the story
Saunders is such a wise and amiable teacher ... A page-turner
Luminously perceptive
A masterclass in how to be human ... unfailingly, often thrillingly illuminating … Published any time, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain would be a joyous reminder that fiction is “the most effective mode of mind-to-mind communication ever devised”. Published now, it feels like vital and civilising corrective to the pretend certainties of public life – and, increasingly, of our personal lives too
One of the most accurate and beautiful depictions of what it is like to be inside the mind of a writer that I’ve ever read
The Russian greats truly shine in this account; but Saunders is the real star. His way of expressing himself is simultaneously supremely intellectual and jovially down-to-earth. It’s rare to read a book and love it so much that you think it’s simply perfect. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is that book
Joins a long tradition of using Russian literature as a guide to life … Practical and playful … it also probes exactly how narrative techniques make us more alert, attentive and sympathetic in reading books and the world around us
By the end Saunders is wondering if there is indeed any point in writing at all. I won’t spoil his conclusion.
Suffice to say, the hairs on the back of my neck were alert
Suffice to say, the hairs on the back of my neck were alert
Suffused with wry humour … Not an academic interpretation, but a reader’s companion. I was pleasurably absorbed from start to finish
The Booker-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo considers the art of fiction through seven classic Russian short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol
The combination of Saunders’s piercing mind and the Russian subjects being Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Gogol promises to be a highbrow treat for fans of literature, and a book offering deep insights into storytelling and how narrative functions
A literary masterclass
But the real star of A Swim isn't Chekhov or Turgenev or Tolstoy or Gogol - it's Saunders himself ... This book will quite simply make you a better, more observant and more understanding reader
Part intro to Russian literature, part musings on craft, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is all pleasure
A worship song to writers and readers
His warmth, enthusiasm and homespun metaphors – all part of that “writerly charm” – banish any sense of the chilly, mechanistic Fiction Lab ... Gleefully overshoots its brief as a technical manual or how-to guide … A Swim in a Pond in the Rain generates more fun, more wit, more sympathetic sense, than we have any right to hope for from a 400-page critical study
There should be more books like this
A masterclass from a warm and engagingly enthusiastic companion
A masterclass in short fiction by one of the finest teachers alive… It is a joyously civilised primer on how to write – and live – better
Warm, playful and acutely perceptive
Not just astute, humane lit crit but an inspirational manifesto for the art of fiction
A masterclass in writing … a real treat
[I] loved George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain … Genial, generous and illuminating ... He is a great teacher as well as a great practitioner, and makes you see more
A tin of caviar sort of a book … Saunders guides, prods, nudges, urges you to disagree … It will stay with you and transform how you read story by story, sentence by sentence
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