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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Now I have and though of course there is no feedback I do actually feel like I've taken a class on deconstructing a short story. Historias sencillas, pero no simples; todas son —en distintas formas— conmovedoras, consiguen que nos interese lo que les sucede a los personajes, nos hacen pensar, dudar, indignarnos a veces. Now Saunders has developed as essays some of the thoughts arising from those classes, and put them together into a book alongside the stories he’s discussing – by Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Gogol.

And if that’s the only way we can read foreign literature, short of learning just about every language in which the originals we’d love to read were written, it’s still better than not reading them at all. Ivan, the protagonist, is a maker of marks, (and by extension, so are we all maker of marks; this is why the humble farmer friend in Chekhov’s story looks also like an artist and a professor). The result is an uptick in our attentiveness; subtly rebuffed by the story, we get, we might say, a new respect for its truthfulness. I tried to move into a nearby dorm but they were oddly unreceptive to this and I had to leave before the police arrived.Because, in this book, Saunders goes through short stories by the Russian greats, and teaches us the elements of reading, understanding, and writing. What I appreciated is how Turgenev showed that the passion for vocal art is universal and that these two schools of thought about vocalism can be instinctively felt by anyone, including the impoverished peasants in the remote and isolated lands. Every chapter articulated a truth a book that, as an avid reader, I had felt before and never knew for sure that anyone else shared.

En estos días, en los que a pesar de estar tan interconectados gracias a la tecnología es tan fácil sentir que perdemos el vínculo con lo que realmente importa, la lectura ayuda a conectar de nuevo o, al menos, a creer que esa conexión sigue siendo posible.And here's Saunders giving clear and matter-of-fact lessons on seven incredible short stories and explaining exactly why they are so great without diminishing the inexplicable aspects of story. Asya and Faust are good, for example, if someone wants to taste how deep Turgenev could go beyond the sketches. Sí, el relato es un formato literario exigente —incluso cruel, despiadado— como lo pueda ser un chiste, una canción, una nota de suicido: el autor se lo juega todo a una tirada. Saunders doesn’t come from the end of a completed story but dives in at the beginning and into the middle, trying to experience it in the making, imagine why it unfolded the way it did.

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. Can one live a good life by trying to be good, to do good, like the servant girl, who clearly makes those around her happy?

En realidad, yo también me voy a contradecir; para Saunders sí hay una regla: leer lo que has escrito, leerlo y releerlo, cada vez como si no lo hubieras escrito tú, o tratando de sentir lo que sentiría otra persona al leerlo por primera vez. Reading short stories with George Saunders over my shoulder helping me to appreciate and unpack them is now the only way I want to read short stories?