A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

A story is a series of incremental pulses, each of which does something to us. Each puts us in a new place, relative to where we just were. Criticism is not some inscrutable, mysterious process. 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. What I stress to my students is how empowering this process is. The world is full of people with agendas, trying to persuade us to act on their behalf (spend on their behalf, fight and die on their behalf, oppress others on their behalf). But inside us is what Hemingway called a “built-in, shockproof, shit detector.” How do we know something is shit? We watch the way the deep, honest part of our mind reacts to it. And that part of the mind is the one that reading and writing refine into sharpness.

There's a description in The Goldfinch of a main character's “oddball and unthwartable faith in what, in childhood, he had liked to call ‘the Planet of Earth.'” When I read this book I thought of that quote. If I had one word to describe Saunders' outlook and his writing, it would be “humane” - both in what he would term a “moral-ethical” dimension, and also in a literal sense of always pertaining to humanity and humanness, for which he demonstrates such an oddball and unthwartable faith.

Prior to this book, I had read a handful of classic Russian short stories, and always because it was compulsory, part of some curriculum. I don't gravitate to short stories or older fiction, so the thing that brought me here was all Saunders. In this book, he shares thoughts on thinking, reading, writing, and revising, and how each of those things can shape the way we understand ourselves and each other. He does so in response to works of Russian literature by four of the greats (helpfully embedded in the book).

I highlighted so much of this book and can't wait to reread it.