9781984856029-1984856022-A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

ISBN-13: 9781984856029
ISBN-10: 1984856022
Edition: Later prt.
Author: George Saunders
Publication date: 2021
Publisher: Random House
Format: Hardcover 432 pages
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Book details

ISBN-13: 9781984856029
ISBN-10: 1984856022
Edition: Later prt.
Author: George Saunders
Publication date: 2021
Publisher: Random House
Format: Hardcover 432 pages

Summary

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life (ISBN-13: 9781984856029 and ISBN-10: 1984856022), written by authors George Saunders, was published by Random House in 2021. With an overall rating of 4.5 stars, it's a notable title among other books. You can easily purchase or rent A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life (Hardcover) from BooksRun, along with many other new and used books and textbooks. And, if you're looking to sell your copy, our current buyback offer is $2.99.

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves--and our world today.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE * "[A] worship song to writers and readers."--Oprah Daily

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, "We're going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn't fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art--namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?" He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

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