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

by George Saunders

According to Donald Barthelme, “The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do.” Gerald Stern put it this way: “If you start out to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking—then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking.”