A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

by George Saunders

“The secret of boring people,” Chekhov said, “lies in telling them everything.”

Every time I read “Alyosha the Pot,” it puts me in that state of wondering. And it never gives me an answer but only says: “Keep wondering.” And that, I think, is its real accomplishment.

These days, it’s easy to feel that we’ve fallen out of connection with one another and with the earth and with reason and with love. I mean: we have. But to read, to write, is to say that we still believe in, at least, the possibility of connection.

That’s the essence of these activities: ascertaining whether connection is happening, and where, and why.

Was all of this excellent art made by, and for, the bourgeoisie enabling and cloaking czarist excesses all along, and was this part of the reason the Stalinists turned so violently against humanist virtues?

But I also believe, especially as I get older, that we should keep our expectations humble. We shouldn’t overestimate or unduly glorify what fiction does. And actually, we should be wary of insisting that it do anything in particular.

We’ve been comparing the pre-reading state of our minds to the post-reading state. And that’s what fiction does: it causes an incremental change in the state of a mind. That’s it. But, you know—it really does it. That change is finite but real.

God save us from manifestos, even mine.

We can decide only so much. The big questions have to be answered by hours at the desk. So much of the worrying we do is a way of avoiding work, which only delays the (work-enabled) solution.

I am reminded that my mind is not the only mind. I feel an increased confidence in my ability to imagine the experiences of other people and accept these as valid. I feel I exist on a continuum with other people: what is in them is in me and vice versa.

Fiction helps us remember that everything remains to be seen.

That’s a pretty hopeful model of human interaction: two people, mutually respectful, leaning in, one speaking so as to compel, the other listening, willing to be charmed. That, a person can work with.