Even though I nearly always follow Mavis Gallant’s advice about reading short stories (in short, don’t rush), something about the way I’m reading stories this year has changed. Or something about the rest of my reading has changed. Choosing more responsively has made my stack more unruly than usual.
Mavis Gallant is sitting “in her apartment on Rue Jean Ferrandi” when, in a “voice gentle yet commanding”, she says “There are two kinds of writers to me, the Tolstoy and the Dostoevsky.” With this Russian project underway, I sat up a little straighter. “And they’re both extraordinary,” she
We’re in a seven-month-long exploration of George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, with the second story: Turgenev’s “The Singers” (1852), first published in his second volume of A Sportsman’s Sketches. Since we last “met”, I’ve been running into George Saunders regularly. He blurbed the insert
On the second-last page of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders explains that writing the book turned out to be a chance to ask himself “again” and “at length” this question: “Do you still want to devote your life to fiction?” Spoiler: he does.
Abi-Nakhoul, Atwood, Brinkley, Graves, Kemick, Nunez, Segal Short Stories in October, November and December Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, these stories capture a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to three familiar writers and also explored four new-to-me story writers.
