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

Author:Saunders, George [Saunders, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Writing, Classics
Amazon: B0871LKPJ3
Goodreads: 53487237
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2021-01-12T08:00:00+00:00

AND YET THEY DROVE ON

THOUGHTS ON “MASTER AND MAN”

Tolstoy: moral-ethical giant, epic novelist, vegetarian, proponent of chastity (which he failed to practice consistently, even as an old man), agricultural theorist, educational reformer, leader of an international Christian-anarchist religious movement described by Nabokov as “a neutral blend between a kind of Hindu Nirvana and the New Testament—Jesus without the church,” early nonviolence advocate with devoted disciples all over the world, including the young Gandhi. It’s not much of a stretch to say that his fiction changed the way human beings think about themselves.

So, it’s interesting to note that his prose consists almost entirely of facts. The language isn’t particularly elevated or poetic or overtly philosophical. It’s mostly just descriptions of people doing things.

Consider this, from early in “Master and Man”:

“[Nikita] went as usual cheerfully and willingly to the shed, stepping briskly and easily on his rather turned-in feet; took down from a nail the heavy tasseled leather bridle, and jingling the rings of the bit went to the closed stable where the horse he was to harness was standing by himself.”

Or this, as Nikita gets down to work:

“Having whisked the dusty, grooved back of the well-fed young stallion with the skirt of his coat, he put a bridle on his handsome head, straightened his ears and forelock, and having taken off his halter led him out to water.”

Or from their stop in Grishkino:

“ ‘It is ready,’ said one of the young women, and after flicking with her apron the top of the samovar which was now boiling over, she carried it with an effort to the table, raised it, and set it down with a thud.”

Here’s another color-coding challenge: on any page of the story, mark facts in one color, authorial opinions (philosophical or religious musings or aphoristic observations on human behavior) in another. You’ll find that the story is nearly all facts, heavily weighted toward factual descriptions of action. When Tolstoy does offer a subjective opinion on a character, these are rendered as objectively and precisely as Nikita’s crossing of the yard or his preparation of the horse. And since they appear, as they do, in a matrix of facts, we’re inclined to accept them. (We accept Tolstoy’s assertion that Nikita is usually cheerful and willing in the same spirit that we accept his assertion that the bridle is leather and tasseled.)

Likewise, as we’ll see in a bit, when Tolstoy recounts the thoughts or feelings of his characters, he does this succinctly and precisely, using simple objective sentences that seem factual in their syntax and modesty of assertion.

A fact draws us in. This seems to be one of those “laws of fiction” we’ve been seeking. “The car was dented and red” makes a car appear in the mind. Even more so if the fact is an action: “The dented red car slowly left the parking lot.” Notice how little we doubt that statement, the spontaneous, involuntary buy-in that makes us forget that there is no car and no parking lot.

But to say that the story is nearly all facts doesn’t mean that Tolstoy is a minimalist.

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