Where I Get Some Questions Answered

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My only real interest in this book is that it was a gift from a friend who wanted to read it and discuss it over coffee or something, and I think that's a fine thing. I did it.

But on my own, I would have never read this or the stories discussed in it. I'm glad I did, for reasons I'll explain, but it was a slog. It took me waaaaayyy to long.

I like the author, or what I can glean of him (seems like a lot) from this discussion. Intelligent. Pleasant. Considerate. Genuinely interested in sharing his love of reading and writing with others. I applaud that. And I think he does a very good job at explaining some things I've been wondering about, so I could give him a five for those things. But I still really really don't like--actively dislike--the stories he's loving, even at the end, and for all of them I'd give a 1. However, I must stress the following: that is my opinion. I do not care to persuade anyone to join me in holding the same opinion. (*If you're curious, though, see below.)

Skippable section on opinion, but I enjoyed writing this, so you do you

Here's my passionate take on that topic: an opinion about art--in this case short stories, or literature more broadly--is a real thing, a genuine, significant, personal matter, one that indicates a meaningful truth about yourself. It might or might not be interesting to others. It might or might not guide some other people's reading. And it can be fun to discuss with others, even debate, sharing insights and interpretations. But that opinion is not right. It isn't possible for it to be right. Nor is it wrong. It's a kind of truth, but not one that stretches across the space between us. A private truth, perhaps.

Very often, critics try to make a case for their perspective on some matter, on some story, attempting to bridge that gap between individual minds, triumphing over mere belief, rendering an opinion so durable that everyone can call it Truth. I don't believe that's possible. In fact, I insist that it is not possible, by definition. I hold that this kind of judgment, no matter how erudite, no matter how glossy, is just very shiny opinion that can never become Judgment. There is no trump card; no professor can say "I am right so listen," nor can a publisher or a literary lion or the most successful critic on booktok. You can't weave straw into gold, nor can you weave opinions into facts.

An author I adore, a writer of genre fiction but also a lover of literature, has often argued in social media that some writers and some literature are simply better than others, and he points to classics like Greek drama to say how plainly they are superior to whatever popular literature you might name. (He does not exclude his own writing, I might add. He is consistent.) I once pushed back, asking better for what purpose? (My contention as a teacher is that I can get more buy-in and participation from a class full of reluctant readers with a YA novel or Twilight or a Dan Brown thriller or [fill in a book or author mocked by Very Smart People] than I ever could with Aristophanes' Frogs or any classic you might name. Could I teach that other stuff? Yes, of course, I had to do it many many many times. But it's hard and it's dry and it turns kids off to school, even when you use every trick available to teacherkind. It's prejudice and magical thinking ("a good teacher could get them excited about Hemingway...") and it has never worked. I'd rather get a bunch of young students engaged in reading a Goosebumps book than waste their time dragging them unwillingly through Ethan Frome again or some other book that makes them lose their minds.)

Anyway, I exceeded his patience in debating the topic and he didn't reply. That's cool.

But the subjectiveness of opinion is a basic idea that can't be defeated by Superior Knowledge or Greater Success in Literature or any other marker of personal worth. Opinions just will never be facts, and someone's opinion will never be better than someone else's. The value in any work is the value the individual reader finds in it. Any hierarchy people think they can perceive in the collected works of literature from around the world is an illusion propped up by vanity, especially those endorsed by white supremacists and other deep lovers of the Western Canon. [My caveat--all such works are worth discussing and possibly studying to trace the history of literature, which is a worthwhile topic, but I absolutely repudiate the notion that they should be used exclusively because they are the Best Writing Available, or the Best Models, or whatever argument you might see.]

My final thought on that can be summed up by this simple advice: like what you like.

Back to the book, finally

Reading this book by George Saunders brought all of these thoughts to mind because I have often wondered why people like books and stories that I absolutely do not. I also wonder why they are so often held up as the very best in literature when I find them much less to my taste than almost anything. [I tried to like Rushdie's Midnight's Children, a Booker Prize-winning novel, and I hated it. Stopped reading for a year. Started again. Hated it. Finished it. Hated it. Readers online: "My favorite novel ever!" WTF?] I've finished a number of books that had me thinking the same thing: Sterne's Tristram Shandy; several books by Faulkner; Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel; and some others. People love them. I hated them--if you will forgive the strong expression. But the discussion throughout this book, looking at Russian short stories, describing ways to analyze them, noticing things, trying out theories, attempting to piece together the author's purpose, asking why the author made the choices he did--I sort of get it now. It's a scavenger hunt, an attempt to solve a mystery, trying to solve the puzzle of how the author's mind is working. It is necessarily--at least speaking of the analyses offered by Saunders here--a metacognitive approach to reading. What am I seeing? Why is it here? Why did the author choose that? What is he trying to make me see? What conjectures can I make about the meaning of this work? How well has he achieved his aim?

And so on.

None of those questions are the reason I read, however, any more than I watch movies to analyze the cinematography. And the stuff I do read might not yield interesting results if put to these particular tests. It's like listening to my favorite indie bands only to have someone say that they are terrible to dance to. Well... I'm not trying to dance. That's the wrong question to ask this music. Other genres work well for that. This is something else.

To connect this all to my diatribe on opinion versus fact (or judgment), I believe that some readers will totally love what he does here, and will enjoy Russian short stories (in particular) or literary fiction (in general) as much as he does, and will see in all of this valuable lessons in writing their own stories. I will not. Our opinions are not compatible. That does not make any of this less true for those other people. They can Like What They Like, just as I will.

So I learned some things. I will not be reading any more Russian literature. Life is short. But if you like it, go for it. If you like literary fiction in general, read it all you want. I'm not even cynical about it, and I'm not being sarcastic. If you like it, it's good.

Same for all of us, whatever we're reading.

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*[Why don't I like these stories? In simple terms, they are dreary. A downer. They make me sad. I don't have room in my emotional life for art that only wounds. Nothing good happens--except for a moment, sometimes--but that moment is followed by things like early death, bad marriage, physical abuse, hopelessness, alcoholism, missed opportunities, injustice, and depression. Some of it is ugly. But there is no payoff, no resolution, no correction, no possibility for happiness. I hate all of that. It's like watching replays of your favorite sport, but only the ones where your team loses. How is this fun? That has been my question. I feel like I've had it answered to some extent.]

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