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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It's just so generous and gentle, so easy to get your arms around George Saunders' ideas of what makes good writing.

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? Saunders’s “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain” offers a close reading of some of the best short stories ever written. The result is an uptick in our attentiveness; subtly rebuffed by the story, we get, we might say, a new respect for its truthfulness.Then, Saunders would comment in a separate short chapters -“afterthoughts” about his own process of writing. His analyses include historical and biographical information that bring Russia and these authors to life, and by including details about his own life and writing process, Saunders invites us into the mysteries through which art is created — showing how it's done and why it matters. I was internally screaming and fangirling to find a book that was written by someone like me, for me. It’s kind of crazy but that’s the whole game: a) becoming convinced that there is a voice inside you that really, really knows what it likes, and b) getting better at hearing that voice and acting on its behalf.

I want to state for the record, that I would like George Saunders to narrate my life (on paper, not in audio). However, it also allows Saunders to digress a bit on following one’s own inner style/voice for trueness. My daughter and I are also both writing (parallel) stories this summer based on our trip to the Southland to complete our having visited all fifty US States! Gooseberries” is brilliant because it offers us so many potential versions of a good life, in so short a space.What the protagonist is really talking about is the fact that what brings true meaning to life is not happiness, but the good we do to others—and also the bad we leave behind. The basic drill I'm proposing here is: read the story, then turn your mind to the experience you've just had. Even those who are happy are not immune to unhappiness because unhappiness and death visits us all in the end.