My favorite story was Tolstoy's "Master and Man" where characters make repetitive bad choices, and that makes the story work.

A few years back, after the end of one class (chalk dust hovering in the autumnal air, old-fashioned radiator clanking in the corner, marching band processing somewhere in the distance, let’s say),” he had the realisation that “some of the best moments of my life, the moments during which I’ve really felt myself offering something of value to the world, have been spent teaching that Russian class. As a peek behind the veil, it could very well be fascinating; for a dweller behind the veil, the revelations are in the stories themselves. I’m moved by this clumsy work of art that seems to want to make the case that art may be clumsy if only it moves us.

unfailingly, often thrillingly illuminating … Published any time, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain would be a joyous reminder that fiction is “the most effective mode of mind-to-mind communication ever devised”. Perhaps it’s less like applying a series of lessons and more like the training of an intuition that flashes between hand, eye, mind. Or maybe they're just not fans of George Saunders ever since he dragged poor Lincoln into the damn Bardo (which we had to look up to discover "in some schools of Buddhism, bardo, antarābhava, or chūu is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth. Even those who are happy are not immune to unhappiness because unhappiness and death visits us all in the end. What we turn to art for is precisely this moment, when we “know” something (we feel it) but can’t articulate it because it’s too complex and multiple.

He talks about the difference between technical skill and true beauty in art and the way this collides in Turgenev's story.Still, there is sufficient ambivalence in Turgenev’s construction of the story to be open to his approach as perfectly valid too. El libro toca muchos más temas: causalidad, descripciones, omisiones… pero Saunders nunca ofrece recetas ni reglas de oro, a veces incluso parece contradecirse: comentando un relato te habla de la economía inherente a esta forma literaria (todo lo que está tiene que estar por algo) y en el siguiente de las descripciones y digresiones que dan textura a la narración.

And that many times, he lets it lead him to where he's meant to go, as opposed to the other way around. I come away from this book delighted with having had this time spent with close reading of this brilliant text, shared with a magnificent mind that is Saunders. En estos días, en los que a pesar de estar tan interconectados gracias a la tecnología es tan fácil sentir que perdemos el vínculo con lo que realmente importa, la lectura ayuda a conectar de nuevo o, al menos, a creer que esa conexión sigue siendo posible. 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 my opinion, Gogol stands out with his unique ability to create distinctive voices in his prose and in his anticipation of the 20s century absurdism. He links each story to a specific aspect of writing and this gives structural reality to his ideas in a way that I've never seen a writing book do before. This is a resistance literature, written by progressive reformers in a repressive culture, under constant threat of censorship… The resistance in the stories is quiet, at a slant, and comes from perhaps the most radical idea of all: that every human being is worthy of attention and that the origins of every good and evil capability of the universe may be found by observing a single, even very humble, person and the turnings of his or her mind.

I thought I was only going to be reading a critique of 7 Russian short stories, but there is so much more depth and personality in this book. Unfortunately, it gave me a bit of bias to interpretation, but I think it allowed me to actually finish the book in a more timely manner when there was so much I wanted to ponder (ebooks being subject to a two-week loan). En todo caso, cada uno sirve a Saunders para ilustrar un aspecto específico de la creación de este tipo de obras. What I appreciated is how Turgenev showed that the passion for vocal art is universal and that these two schools of thought about vocalism can be instinctively felt by anyone, including the impoverished peasants in the remote and isolated lands. The feeling this book evokes is familiarity and calm in a classroom about a subject you are passionate about.It seems to me that Saunders thinks that Ivan is a bit of a hypocrite on the basis that he enjoys his swim and is content while preaching the impossibility of happiness. even if they converge finally on the same points of appreciation, and the same questions of meaning.