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

by George Saunders

I remember once seeing in the evening, at low tide, a great white seagull on the flat sandy shore of the sea which was roaring away dully and menacingly in the distance: it was sitting motionless, its silky breast turned toward the scarlet radiance of sunset, only now and then spreading out its long wings toward the familiar sea, toward the low, blood-red sun; I remembered that bird as I listened to Yashka.

so beautiful i could cry

Because I’m a former engineer, let me list the bits constituting those eleven (possibly extraneous, currently under investigation) pages below.

im dead

“The Darling” is about a tendency, present in all of us, to misunderstand love as “complete absorption in,” rather than “in full communication with.”