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

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue: “We Begin”

“In the Cart’”

“The Singers”

“The Darling”

“Master and Man”

“The Nose”

“Gooseberries”

“Alyosha the Pot”

“We End”

Appendices

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

AppendicesChapter Summaries & Analyses

“Appendix A: A Cutting Exercise” Summary

Saunders includes some suggested writing exercises as appendixes to this book. For the first of these exercises, Saunders asks writers to give themselves just five minutes to edit a text that provides, and then to ask themselves: “1) What did I cut? 2) Why did I cut it? 3) Is the resulting piece better or worse?” (493).

From this exercise, writers can learn about their editorial instincts. Saunders believes that a writer’s “voice” (496) is not developed simply by writing, but by revising and cutting . Moreover, editing adds focus and energy to a story; once the “mediocre bits” (497) are chopped from phrases, new directions for the story suggest themselves.

Saunders also suggests a follow-up exercise: cutting one of the writer’s own stories in half, once it is close to finished. He observes that this exercise can give a writer a “muscle memory” for editing (498).

“Appendix B: An Escalation Exercise” Summary

This writing exercise gives writers 45 minutes to write a 200-word story using only 50 words. They are to keep track of these words with a numbered list at the bottom of their text.

These kinds of constraints can push writers to be more inventive and playful. Because they have a minimum of descriptive vocabulary, they are forced to get to the action of the story more quickly. Moreover, they are freed up from a certain amount of writerly self-consciousness: “We’re [usually] working within the narrow range of how we think we should write. This exercise [allows us to ask ourselves] ‘What other writers might be in here?’” (501).

“Appendix C: A Translation Exercise” Summary

In this exercise, Saunders provides five different translations of a line from the Isaac Babel story “In the Basement.” He asks writers to rank these translations in order of preference, and then ask themselves what their particular rankings show about their own taste. Doing so will give writers a better sense of their “voice, i.e., that which you are going to be relying on in every sentence of your career” (504).

Saunders then suggests writers extend this exercise by writing their own translation and using it as a basis for a story. This will give writers a sense of how words and phrases immediately evoke a certain fictional atmosphere, to which the rest of the story must adhere: “That new sentence, sitting there by itself, instantaneously starts dictating a whole story for itself, i.e., a story in which it makes sense” (506).