A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo

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Ours will need to work differently, not only to distinguish them from the older works but so that they will speak to our time as freshly as these Russian stories spoke to theirs. It’s just a matter of: (1) noticing ourselves responding to a work of art, moment by moment, and (2) getting better at articulating that response. Apparently, that’s what Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Gogol and the likes of them did, and keep doing. I expected a collection of Russian literature stories with some analysis, but instead I received a re-awakening in how to best interpret what I read from now on.

I want to thank you for allowing me to guide you rather bossily through these stories, for letting me show you how I read them, why I love them. That story actually is the one that undergoes the most detailed literary analysis, as he shares different translations of phrases from the original Russian. It could happen in more intimate settings, too, as in a small class of 20 boxed off in a room looking remarkably like high school classrooms (only with a few tendrils of ivy curling in from the bricks outside the window).I can't say that I like classic Russian short stories any more now than I did before reading this book, but my appreciation for them has definitely grown. Master and Man,” we begin living it; the words disappear and we find ourselves thinking not about word choice but about the decisions the characters are making and decisions we have made, or might have to make someday, in our actual lives. He was trying to show me the techniques used and choices made through which the author had produced something truly great in his opinion.

Y con cada cambio, reevaluar las consecuencias en la historia de esa palabra que ha aparecido o desaparecido.

Apparently, in addition to writing some of my favourite long and short fiction, George Saunders is an Assistant Professor in Syracuse University’s Creative Writing Program, and one of the classes he teaches to the MFA students is on the Russian short story. In the case of “The Darling”, the English version got him quite derailed from the original in my opinion. Even as implores his friends to be good, he indulges in a transcendent swim in a pond, admires the beautiful servant girl (Saunders rightfully notes that every mention of her involves some reference to her beauty with words like “beautiful,” “soft,” “delicate,” and “pretty”), enjoys the delicious food, and delights in the warm shelter his friend provides.

He's been teaching this class for many years, and he finally decided to make the class public through this book. The book includes seven Russian short stories (3 from Chekhov, 2 from Tolstoy, 1 from Gogol, and 1 from Turgenev). Una buena historia crea expectativas en el lector (si comienza con un hombre en lo alto de un edificio, ¿acaso no esperamos que salte, o que alguien le empuje?The feeling this book evokes is familiarity and calm in a classroom about a subject you are passionate about. Saunders nunca ha encontrado especialmente útiles conceptos como “tema”, “argumento”, “desarrollo de personajes” o “estructura”, tan comunes en los cursos de escritura creativa. And that, by extrapolation, every person in the world has his or her inner orchestra, and the instruments present in their orchestras are, roughly speaking, the same as the ones in ours.

When the two men take shelter with their friend, while eating a delicious meal cooked and served by a beautiful woman, Ivan, the protagonist, tells a story whose moral seems to be this: happiness exists in the world only because poor people are forced to bear the burden of the happy. Quieter instruments are allowed to come to the fore; our usual blaring beliefs are asked to sit quietly, horns in their laps. But I enjoyed it that way, exploring what Saunders loves about them as he champions their storycraft and beauty. I think I would have actually preferred to see how he would have handled seven stories from different time periods, written with different types of readers in mind. 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.

Para él, un relato es un flujo continuo que debe atrapar al lector línea a línea: uno lee la primera frase y se pregunta ¿por qué leer la siguiente?