On the Shelf
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
By George Saunders
Random House: 432 pages, $28
If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
About a decade back, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead had a nice sideline poking fun at people who make pronouncements about good writing. In a speech, he caricatured the plummy, officious critic delivering high-toned statements of the obvious. (“When we see a word, we must ask ourselves foremost, ‘What does it mean?’”) In an essay, he mocked the platitudes that infest most lists of writing rules. (“In many classic short stories, the real action occurs in the silences. Try to keep all the good stuff off the page.”) Point being: Successful fiction is too slippery and complex to be reduced to how-to lists.
2
Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. So every month, The A.V. Club narrows down the endless options to five of the books we’re most excited about.
Advertisement
Image: NYRB Classics
The Leonora Carrington renaissance continues apace! In 2017, NYRB released the Surrealist painter and author’s memoir and Dorothy published her
Complete Stories. Now, before Carrington’s son Gabriel Weisz releases his own “memoir” about his mother later this year, NYRB returns with a reprint of her 1974 novel.
The Hearing Trumpet is difficult to synopsize but involves a 92-year-old woman whose family ships her off to an elder care facility. There, Carrington’s interests in absurdism, conspiracies, and Surrealism take over in a novel that Blake Butler describes as “
Home > books > George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain review – Russian lessons in literature and life
George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain review – Russian lessons in literature and life | reviews, news & interviews George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain review – Russian lessons in literature and life
George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain review – Russian lessons in literature and life
A visionary engineer gets under the bonnet of great fiction
by Boyd TonkinWednesday, 06 January 2021
Tools for transcendence: George SaundersChloe Aftel
Before he published fiction, George Saunders trained as an engineer and wrote technical reports. The Booker-winning author of