How wonderful it would be to have a selection of other classic stories with Saunders' conversational analysis. I found the examination of endings particularly useful--he has us imagining the story ending somewhat sooner than it does, and picturing how that would change the story. But nothing doing: the landowner’s a bit useless and ineffective, and anyway Marya’s preoccupied by her problems with the janitor at school, who is rude to her and hits the boys.

For he does just the opposite of what many students feel teachers and professors do when they perform an analysis (or a "close reading") of a text: rather than "kill it", or "kill the enjoyment" of the work, he brings it to life, perhaps makes it even better than the author himself intended. All the same, it’s not an MFA textbook (though highly useful for those who would like to attend or teach in MFA programs), because it’s also intended for a general reader and Saunders skillfully makes his teaching adaptable into the discussion about many aspects in reading this literary form. He talks about how inserting that truly beautiful thing into a story is so much more difficult than mere technical skill, and that this beauty is what truly wins over the reader in the end.The book includes seven Russian short stories (3 from Chekhov, 2 from Tolstoy, 1 from Gogol, and 1 from Turgenev). After each, he steps us through how he reads them and how to feel them (not what to feel but what to think about), figure out what the authors are doing, what they might have done differently, and why the stories work just as they are. These stories we've just read were written during an incredible seventy-year artistic renaissance in Russia.

This process would certainly help writing students to understand the mechanics of the story and its construction, but it didn’t make for an enjoyable reading experience and I was happy to discover that each of the ensuing stories is included in full before Saunders begins to analyse them (this seems a peevish complaint but I’m including it merely as a warning for anyone else who may be turned off at that point; do carry on. Uno pensaría que cualquier lector empedernido, como es mi caso, es, en mayor o menor medida, un aspirante a escritor. On the basis of this ending and one more phrase before that, Saunders seems to be reevaluating the whole story. What fiction means in the world and how it connects us, puts us in some “other” person’s shoes, makes us less afraid of some “other” - the humanity of the craft, the masters, and the professor are wonderful. The title essay, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain” is a study of Anton Chekhov’s transcendent story, “Gooseberries.Here was her past and her present, and she could imagine no other future than the school, the road to the town and back … ” Saunders begins to speculate forwards, as any reader is bound to. The Darling' proceeds faster, but along similar analysis, showing a more dialed-out view of the rhythm of a story. Our inner orchestra has been instructed that certain instruments are to dominate, others to play softly or not at all. George Saunders is the author of nine books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker P I've tried to be as clear and persuasive as possible, telling you what you should be noticing, pointing out certain technical features, offering my best explanation of why "we" were moved in this place or that, and so on.