I can imagine what a great teacher he must be. Finally, Saunders writes in clear, unadorned English, eschewing the jargon of editors, writing teachers and others. The stories are masterpieces, which is not to say they would receive acceptances in very many of today’s literary magazines. I for one believe that his analyses succeed.
More importantly each story is accompanied by an essay in which Saunders dissects the story to explain how the pieces are put together to make each a masterpiece. This book contains seven stories, written by these authors, that Saunders considers masterworks of short fiction. Saunders is a lover of Russian writing, so one could guess that Chekhov’s swimmer experiences in the water is what Saunders takes from the stories of Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol, and Tolstoy. The first half of this book’s title refers to an ecstatic swim described by Anton Chekhov in his story, “Goosberries”. George Saunders is a prolific, prize winning writer in multiple genres and a Professor of Writing at Syracuse University.
I wish that I’d had this book some decades earlier. Like many thousands of people, I love to write and sometimes try my hand at fiction. This is an amazingly conceived and written book for any writer (or reader) of short fiction.
0 kommentar(er)
