A few months ago, J highly recommended that I read George Saunders's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain and over the Thanksgiving weekend, I did. My copy of the book is digital and borrowed from the public library but this particular one is worth buying in print and reading over. There are things to learn that cannot happen in a single pass through the book - which is what I have done so far. It would be worthwhile to pick up any one of the short stories in the book and read it another time, go over Saunders's dissection of it so you better understand the lessons there - become a better writer
A well-written bit of prose is like a beautifully hand-painted kite, lying there on the grass. It’s nice. We admire it. Causality is the wind that then comes along and lifts it up. The kite is then a beautiful thing made even more beautiful by the fact that it’s doing what it was made to do.
There is a lot of wisdom in this book and it would take reading it in different moods, frame of mind to use it. In my first reading, this one particularly stood out for me. Good prose like a beautifully hand-painted kite brought to mind many authors I have read in the last couple of decades who had absolutely mastered the craft - the writing was flawless. And yet. I have abandoned these books half or three quarters of the way.
Until now, I blamed that on my declining interest in fiction, becoming too easily bored with age and not finding common ground with the unfolding story. Saunders may have clarified this for me - when the wind came, that beautiful hand-painted kite failed to lift off. There were many bursts of such proverbial wind by the time I put the book down - but it never lifted as it was supposed to. A painted kite no matter how beautiful can be admired only for so long, it must at some point fulfill its destiny and soar in the open sky.
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