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

by George Saunders

Any idea we express is just one of many we have within us. In daily life, of course, we choose to identify with, and endorse, and live by, and fight for certain of those ideas and dampen others that, nevertheless, we’re capable of imagining: vestigial traces of philosophies we embraced when young but have since rejected (hello, Ayn Rand), the strange voices in which we used to speak, ideas that we disagree with politically and that make us uncomfortable when we find traces of them within us. If you’re a pro-immigration person, are there anti-immigrant feelings down there inside you? Of course: that’s why you get so emotional when arguing for immigrants’ rights. You’re arguing against that latent part of yourself. When you get mad at a political opponent, it’s because he’s reminding you of a part of yourself with which you’re uncomfortable. You could, if forced, do a decent imitation of an anti-immigrant person. (Similarly, that angry anti-immigration advocate is railing against his inner leftist.)