Quoting George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, Random House, Ch. Thoughts on "In The Cart", p. 48, 2021

A story is not like real life; it’s like a table with just a few things on it. The “meaning” of the table is made by the choice of things and their relation to one another. Imagine these things on a table: a gun, a grenade, a hatchet, a ceramic statue of a duck. If the duck is at the center of the table, surrounded closely by the weapons, we feel: that duck is in trouble. If the duck, the gun, and the grenade have the hatchet pinned down in one corner, we may feel the duck to be leading the modern weaponry (the gun, the grenade) against the (old-fashioned) hatchet. If the three weapons are each hanging precipitously over one edge of the table and the duck is facing them, we might understand the duck to be a radical pacifist who’s finally had enough.

That’s really all a story is: a limited set of elements that we read against one another.

— George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, Random House, Ch. Thoughts on “In The Cart”, p. 48, 2021

10:01am on December 4, 2024 from Vancouver, Canada.


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         title: George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, Random House, Ch. Thoughts on "In The Cart", p. 48, 2021
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