## Metadata - Author: [[George Saunders]] - Full Title: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain - Category: #books ## Highlights - Once we begin reading the stories, which are, for the most part, quiet, domestic, and apolitical, this idea may strike you as strange; but this is a resistance literature, written by progressive reformers in a repressive culture, under constant threat of censorship, in a time when a writer’s politics could lead to exile, imprisonment, and execution. The resistance in the stories is quiet, at a slant, and comes from perhaps the most radical idea of all: that every human being is worthy of attention and that the origins of every good and evil capability of the universe may be found by observing a single, even very humble, person and the turnings of his or her mind. ([Location 119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0871LKPJ3&location=119)) - We’re about to spend some time in a realm where it is assumed that, as the great (twentieth-century) Russian short story master Isaac Babel put it, “no iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.” ([Location 141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0871LKPJ3&location=141)) - Over the last ten years I’ve had a chance to give readings and talks all over the world and meet thousands of dedicated readers. Their passion for literature (evident in their questions from the floor, our talks at the signing table, the conversations I’ve had with book clubs) has convinced me that there’s a vast underground network for goodness at work in the world—a web of people who’ve put reading at the center of their lives because they know from experience that reading makes them more expansive, generous people and makes their lives more interesting. ([Location 174](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0871LKPJ3&location=174)) - To study the way we read is to study the way the mind works: the way it evaluates a statement for truth, the way it behaves in relation to another mind (i.e., the writer’s) across space and time. ([Location 181](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0871LKPJ3&location=181)) - We might think of structure as simply: an organizational scheme that allows the story to answer a question it has caused its reader to ask. ([Location 325](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0871LKPJ3&location=325)) - If we want to make good structure, we just have to be aware of what question we are causing the reader to ask, then answer that question. ([Location 329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0871LKPJ3&location=329)) - A work of art moves us by being honest and that honesty is apparent in its language and its form and in its resistance to concealment. ([Location 605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0871LKPJ3&location=605)) - Chekhov once said, “Art doesn’t have to solve problems, it only has to formulate them correctly.” ([Location 979](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0871LKPJ3&location=979)) - The world is full of people with agendas, trying to persuade us to act on their behalf (spend on their behalf, fight and die on their behalf, oppress others on their behalf). But inside us is what Hemingway called a “built-in, shockproof, shit detector.” How do we know something is shit? We watch the way the deep, honest part of our mind reacts to it. And that part of the mind is the one that reading and writing refine into sharpness. ([Location 1002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0871LKPJ3&location=1002))