Tori Freeman’s Reviews > A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life > Status Update

"The ghosts don't change Scrooge into someone else; they remind him that he used to be someone else. He was once someone who felt other than the way he feels now, and those earlier people still exist in him. The ghosts, we might say, switch those former people back on."

This is really a fantastic book

“We tend, in discussion, to reduce stories to plot. We feel, correctly, that something of their meaning resides there. But stories also mean through their internal dynamics—the manner in which they unfold, the way one part interacts with another, the instantaneous, felt, juxtaposition of elements.”

“We’re always rationally explaining and articulating things. But we’re at our most intelligent in the moment just before we start to explain or articulate. Great art occurs—or doesn’t—in that instant.”

“Harsh form, the short story. Harsh as a joke, a song, a note from the gallows.”

Ok I can already tell this is going to be fantastic