Dipping My Toes In
George Saunders’s new book lets readers experience Russian literature as if participating in a lively classroom discussion.
Review by Ali Kjergaard
I can picture that swim: overcast skies, the old floating dock, and gray waters. Idyllic sunny days are hard to come by way up north in Minnesota, so you swim no matter what the weather. The air isn’t cold though, it’s sticky in preparation for the rain. As the drop begins to fall the water is strangely warm against the brisk raindrops; I’m warm and a little shivery all at the same time—an odd combination. Clumsy half-hearted strokes cut through choppy waters, and in the middle of the lake amid the sprinkling rain and warm air I want to shout for the sheer pleasure of it all. These swims allow us to experience water in all its forms—raining down on me, supporting my weight as I swim, and filling the air with humidity. A muggy, rainy day isn’t the usual swimming weather. Typically we want bright sunshine and cloudless skies, but perhaps we ought to do more swims in the rain.
It’s little wonder that I enjoyed A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. The title of the book mirrors the experience of reading it: it’s a normal, straightforward collection of short stories. It’s a curious idea for a book, essentially sitting in on a class going through Russian short stories and reflecting on them. The way George Saunders weaves in observations and comments from his students only adds to that feeling of sitting in on a discussion. I found myself turning my head between Saunders’s thoughts on the works and the thoughts of students, and then thinking through my own thoughts on the stories. As a college student I was always looking for the seat far enough away to avoid the first line of questioning, but still close enough to soak in every word. Saunders gives the reader that ideal seat in his classroom. The reader is invited to take a front seat in the classroom without the anxiety of getting called on or having to speak up in the discussion.
I’m still relatively new to Russian literature, and I dragged my feet into it, quite frankly. The more people told me I’d love it, the more I hesitated. “Dickens and Jane Austen, I’ll stick with them,” I thought to myself. It wasn’t until a friend thrust Dr. Zhivago into my hands and said, “Read this,” that I dove into the beauty of Russian literature. You don’t have to be a connoisseur of War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov to enjoy Saunders’s analysis of the short stories. That’s the joy of short stories: they’re short. Saunders includes stories from Chekhov and Tolstoy as well as Gogol and Turgenev, among others. You’re reading the very best Russian literature has to offer.
Being a reader keeps us curious in the rest of our life, knowing that we should always be wondering about the full picture.
The book includes the full text of each story, along with Saunders’s analysis and commentary on it. For the first short story, “In the Cart,” Saunders intersperses his analysis with the text of the story to break the story down one page at a time. The process feels painstakingly drawn out. As a speedier reader I thought about skipping the analysis and just reading the story in its entirety. Don’t do that! It sets the book’s tone. Remember, this is a class; we as the readers must do a bit of work.
I walked away from the book knowing that the pacing of a good short story is hard to capture. More than with any other writing medium, the writer is forced to hold a reader’s attention. Every line must be an intriguing invitation to keep reading, while keeping the plot bustling along. I hadn’t thought of the importance of each sentence (and my own subconscious analysis) until Saunders pointed this out. He breaks down each story not just by plot but by what we see the writer doing (or not doing). He calls attention to our instincts as readers: Why do we process stories the way we do? What questions is our subconscious asking itself as we read these stories? Saunders takes us into some of the characters’ thoughts and feelings, and he reminds us that being a reader is a privilege. The author is choosing to let us in on the world of his characters, and as we get to see the full depth of a character’s thoughts, we can grow in our sympathy for the character. Perhaps it’s just a slight intimation of how it is when God views us, seeing a whole person with all their thoughts and feelings. When we gain this perspective, we feel more willing to extend grace. We find ourselves caring for a character we once disliked. Being a reader keeps us curious in the rest of our life, knowing that we should always be wondering about the full picture.
Saunders recognizes that his readers aren’t a bunch of kids auditing a class. He respects the reader enough to know that some of us have writing aspirations, just as most of his students have. Aspiring writers reading this book will feel at once relieved and discouraged. He’s frank about the clumsiness we see in some of the included stories, but explains that it’s not necessarily a bad thing: “Art may be clumsy if only it moves us.” He offers encouragement that our best voices might be messier than we want them to be. The writing process isn’t a strict procedure, and there isn’t a ten-step method to achieving beauty in a work. There is no precise way to achieve beauty and emotion in our writing. Writing is an instinct we follow, not unlike being a reader. We improve by sitting with our words, working and reworking those words. As Saunders says, we must “energetically mess with it”—a process both fun and exhausting.
Since I was a child, I have tried to write a novel, always varying in genres (my first attempt was at age nine, a fantasy that was essentially Lord of the Rings with a female Aragorn). For years I filled up notebook after notebook only to cast it aside in frustration. Why could I only get out a few really good chapters before I’d peter out on the plot? As it turns out, the short essay form is where I am most comfortable. I still long to take up a space in the world of novels, but they don’t come as naturally to me as essays. Even in essay form, what I begin with is rarely what I’ll end with. What was swirling in my head might come out entirely different once I’m reading the words on paper. But Saunders reminds us that beauty in all its forms is still a gift. “It might not be the type of beauty we’ve always dreamed of making. But we have to take whatever beauty we can get, however we can get it.”
Just as we experience water in different forms in our proverbial “rainy, humid swim,” such is the reader’s experience throughout this book. Saunders’s quirky, humorous analogies offer the surprising coolness of the raindrops, his analysis of our thoughts calls our attention to an atmosphere we weren’t aware existed but has always been there—much like the muggy air—and his words of reassurance to aspiring writers allow us to not just merely dip our toes in, but to jump into our writing wholeheartedly so that we may delight in our works, in whatever form they end.
Ali Kjergaard currently lives in Washington, D.C. where she works as a staffer on Capitol Hill. You can follow her miscellaneous musings on Twitter @AlisonKjergaard.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain was published by Random House on January 12, 2021. You can purchase a copy on their website here.
