A Chekhov story follows a schoolteacher returning from town in a cart. Spring has arrived and the weather is fine, but she feels little pleasure. After thirteen years of teaching, the route is painfully familiar. Her imagined future seems to contain the same school and road.
George Saunders asks us to stop here. Not yet to summarize the theme or explain Russian society. Instead: what have we read? What impression do we have of this woman? What do we want to know next?
This is the starting point of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, published in 2021 and in Zhang Linlin's Chinese translation in 2024. Saunders turns part of his experience teaching Russian short fiction at Syracuse into a book containing seven stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol. The stories accompany his discussions, so newcomers can follow.
The first, In the Cart, is arranged unusually: read a little, stop and talk. Anyone accustomed to finishing uninterrupted may find this intrusive. Saunders uses that inconvenience to reveal something easily missed. Understanding does not suddenly happen when we reach the final page.
Why Do We Want the Next Sentence?
Initially we know only that a woman sits in a cart. Learning that she teaches and has worked in the same place for years gradually gives her unhappiness a particular basis. We begin hoping something might change during the journey. Before the story finishes, possibilities have already formed in our minds.
Saunders attends to that process. Characters are not finished objects awaiting labels. New information changes earlier judgments. An ordinary sentence can make a previous complaint understandable or expose how simply we had imagined someone.
This differs from synopsis. A synopsis explains what happened. Sequential reading also asks why we learn one thing now and another later. Reverse their order, and identical eventual information may produce different reading. Suspense belongs beyond detective fiction: caring about a tired teacher also depends on sequence.
Saunders does not ask readers to replace feeling with technical vocabulary. He begins with ordinary reactions: boredom, discomfort, a sentence that makes us continue. Then we return to words to see where the response formed. Lacking terminology does not prevent seriousness. Prematurely knowing that we ought to be moved may hide why we actually were not.
Reviewer Josh Denslow describes an apt experience. Initially worried that all seven stories would be interrupted, he was relieved that later pieces could first be read whole. Yet by Turgenev's The Singers he was stopping voluntarily to ask why a description appeared. The opening lesson's rhythm had become his own questions.
That change is more interesting than reproducing a teacher's conclusions. A book about reading that merely supplies approved answers leaves readers dependent on authority to identify excellence. Saunders offers practice in responding, then checking the response. Disagreement can point to a sentence or paragraph rather than end with an unexamined difference in taste.
Close reading cannot do everything. Translation's effects on tone and implications heard by an original audience require further knowledge. This is primarily a novelist examining craft, not a history of Russian literature. Recognizing that scope makes it easier to enjoy: without knowing every background detail immediately, we can inspect how these pages change our minds.
Whom Does Alyosha's Obedience Please?
Tolstoy's Alyosha the Pot offers a particularly useful test. Alyosha works from childhood and later serves in a merchant's household, responding whenever called. Duties accumulate, his father takes his wages, and he scarcely has time for regular meals. Complaints are rare.
Those facts alone might produce a portrait of industrious goodness or of someone worked until he has no self. But the cook Ustinya saves food and listens to him. Alyosha discovers that somebody likes him, not only the services he provides. They want to marry; his employer objects, and his father intervenes to prevent it.
Once this hope appears, obedience cannot mean quite the same thing. Knowing whom he likes and what life he desires, we cannot record his surrender of marriage as just another instance of compliance. Readers have seen a loss beneath it.
Saunders does not seal the story into a test with one verdict about goodness. Its forces pull against each other. Alyosha's gentleness genuinely moves us, while people organizing his life gain too much convenience from it. Praising only gentleness forgets the beneficiaries; seeing only a victim can erase patience, affection, and kindness.
In a Believer interview, his questioner directly disagrees, suggesting another understanding of passivity through domination and trauma. Saunders welcomes argument rather than requiring a return to his explanation. This is not merely polite permission to think differently. They dispute the same story, and the difference changes their understanding of a person.
Multiple readings do not make all explanations equally sustainable. Saying Alyosha never wanted anything must confront the marriage passages; saying his life contains no warmth must confront Ustinya. Openness does not authorize ignoring words. It means letting further details test an interpretation once proposed.
I would call this practice in preserving a character's complexity rather than adopting a generally tolerant attitude. Suspending our conclusion does not reduce Alyosha's suffering. It changes readers, who may next encounter someone always saying yes without instantly assuming consent has made everyone happy.
Revision Can Change the Writer's Mind
Returning from reading to writing, Saunders emphasizes revision. The word can suggest replacing a few terms or cutting repetition. His account allows moving paragraphs, removing favorite passages, and reconsidering where an entire piece should go.
Imagine a writer initially intending to demonstrate selfishness, then finding a detail that makes the character's position understandable. The inconvenient detail can be deleted to preserve the intended judgment, or retained to discover where it leads. The second option changes more than verbal polish. It asks what the writer is trying to say. If every paragraph must serve the initial conclusion, even fluent writing becomes predictable.
In a MAYDAY interview, Saunders recalls early work eager to display insight and tending toward prepared bleakness. Later he attended more carefully to the reading experience from sentence to sentence, admitting surprise, humor, and things not fully understood. Technique changed alongside his willingness to release complete control.
That gives the teaching an unusual honesty. A celebrated writer's experience is not packaged as a procedure guaranteed to work for everyone. A sentence still requires judgment by its writer. Readers can understand Saunders's reason and find another in the work. The teacher provides an opportunity to discriminate more closely.
The book therefore reaches beyond aspiring novelists. It takes “I feel” a step further. A beautiful passage invites a question about where its beauty lies; an unconvincing explanation invites identification of what it overlooks. Feeling need not withdraw before authority, nor become immune to examination merely because it is ours.
There is no need to finish quickly. Stories can be reread, discussions revisited days later, and disagreements maintained. A good result may be not learning to read exactly like Saunders, but opening another work with questions of our own—and a willingness to let the next paragraph change them.