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

by George Saunders

(“The writer can choose what he writes about,” said Flannery O’Connor, “but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.”)

A story is a frank, intimate conversation between equals. We keep reading because we continue to feel respected by the writer.

This has led to a general (and, I think, correct) notion that a writer’s beliefs should be kept out of his or her story.