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

by George Saunders

whatever fiction does to or for us, it’s not simple. There’s a certain way of talking about stories that treats them as a kind of salvation, the answer to every problem; they are “what we live by,” and so on. And, to an extent, as you can see by this book, I agree. 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. The critic Dave Hickey has written about this, the notion that saying what art should do might enable a reactionary establishment to start saying what it must do, and then to begin silencing those artists whose works aren’t doing that. In other words, whenever we get up on the soapbox and sing fiction’s praises, explaining how good it is for everyone, we’re actually limiting its freedom to be…whatever it wants to be (perverse, contrary, frivolous, objectionable, useless, too difficult for any but a few to read, and so on).