Tag: literary analysis

Categories
Books Writing

The Secret Handshake

Author George Saunders has a gift for articulating things you already knew but couldn’t say.

I was reminded of this recently when I returned to A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, his generous, luminous masterclass on Russian short fiction — the book that uses Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol as a lens for understanding what fiction actually does to a reader, and why.

Early on, Saunders wonders whether there might be certain laws governing how we respond to stories — not rules handed down by writing programs, but something closer to instinct, something wired into the reading mind.

One of his candidates is physical description. “We like hearing our world described,” he writes. “And we like hearing it described specifically.”

That line stopped me. It has the quality of a truth that, once named, you begin seeing everywhere — in the books you love, in the passages you’ve underlined without quite knowing why, in the sentences that have stayed with you for years long after the plot has faded.

Plot pulls us forward. Character keeps us invested. Ideas give us something to argue with on the drive home. But it’s the specific physicality of a story that makes it land in the body.

“It was raining” barely registers. Tell me instead about raindrops beading on a leaf, or the way mud sucks at a boot heel with a wet shlup, and suddenly I’m not reading about a place — I’m standing in it.

Why should this be?

Saunders doesn’t fully explain it, and maybe the honest answer is that no one fully can.

Our brains are pattern-matching machines, wired by evolution to map territory and imagine consequence — and concrete detail feeds that machinery directly. Or maybe the explanation is simpler and more generous: we love the world, and hearing it rendered with precision is a form of praise.

Whatever the reason, the great writers have always known this law and obeyed it joyfully. With the help of AI I’ve collected a few good examples.

Consider the opening of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms:

In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees.

No grand metaphors. Just pebbles, dust, leaves, color, motion. Yet the scene is so tangible you can almost taste the grit. And the specificity does double duty — it grounds us in a real place while quietly foreshadowing the war that will eventually powder everything.

Dickens, who worked at a different scale entirely, goes symphonic with it. The opening of Bleak House is one of the great set pieces in the language:

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city… Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships… fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck.

The repetition is hypnotic, but it’s the specificity — cabooses, rigging, toes, pipes — that transforms weather into a living, malevolent presence. You don’t just read the fog. You feel it in your lungs.

Fitzgerald does something different again in The Great Gatsby, using the same technique to make moral decay feel physical and inescapable:

This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

Ashes don’t just lie there — they grow, they form, they crumble. The grotesque precision turns an industrial wasteland into an image of everything the Jazz Age is trying not to look at.

And then there is Chekhov, who Saunders loves most of all. In “Gooseberries” — the story that gives Saunders his title — Ivan Ivanych plunges into a river in the rain:

He plunged into the water with a splash and swam in the rain, thrusting his arms out wide; he raised waves on which white lilies swayed.

Those white lilies swaying on the disturbed water — two words, one image — capture pure animal joy more vividly than any abstract declaration of happiness ever could. It’s the kind of detail that makes you want to jump in yourself.

Saunders is right.

Our reading minds light up at this stuff. Specific physical description isn’t decoration or craft-workshop virtue signaling — it’s the secret handshake between writer and reader. It says: I noticed this small, real thing. Did you?

In a world increasingly mediated by screens and summaries and the frictionless delivery of abstracted information, fiction’s quiet insistence on the pebbles and the fog and the lilies feels almost like an act of resistance. It insists that the world is worth looking at. That the particular matters. That rendering one thing exactly right is worth more than gesturing vaguely at everything.

So next time you’re reading — or writing — linger on the details. Describe the world specifically. Our hungry minds will thank you for it.

Questions to Consider

  1. Saunders suggests physical specificity might be a kind of law in fiction — something the reading mind responds to almost instinctively. Do you think this is universal, or culturally conditioned?
  2. The examples here are all from the Western literary canon. Does this law hold in traditions — Japanese, Russian, African, South Asian — that handle interiority and landscape differently?
  3. If our appetite for specific physical detail is partly evolutionary — the brain mapping territory — what does it mean that so much of what we now consume is deliberately abstract and summarized?
  4. Can over-specificity fail? Are there writers who pile on detail to the point where it stops doing its work?
  5. Saunders uses fiction to make the point, but does the same law apply to nonfiction, memoir, or long-form journalism — and if so, who are the writers doing it best right now?
Categories
Creativity Writing

Beyond the Backdrop: Crafting Fiction

Michael Lewis recently interviewed author Amor Towles and the New Orleans Book Festival. They had a great conversation and I highly recommend it (YouTube video)!

Near the end of the conversation with Lewis, Towles shares an explanation of the role history plays in his writing. Turns out he’s shared this explanation many other times during other book talks.

Here’s a rough recap of his explanation:

Imagine that you’re in a theater and you’re about to see is stage play. Let’s say it’s a play of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” What you’re looking at is a living room of a wealthy Russian estate in the countryside with fine furniture. At the back of the room are two French doors, and if you look through them into the distance, you can see the cherry orchard itself. It’s spring, and the trees are in bloom, and you can see the blossoms.

What you’re looking at, of course, when you look across the stage through the French doors, is actually a painted canvas behind the doors. That’s the way a set crew will make a backdrop – they’re going to paint a picture of this orchard and drop it behind the doors. They will not paint it in a hyperrealist style but in an impressionist style like Renoir or Monet, because that’s what’s going to look right to the natural eye at that distance. It should look a little blurry to give the feeling that it’s afternoon. Maybe the blossoms look like they are even moving in the breeze.

In front of that, on either side of the French doors, are bookcases made out of plywood and painted to look like mahogany. On one side is a staircase that goes up to nothing, and on the other is a door that goes nowhere. All a part of the stage set.

But in front of all that is an actual table surrounded by actual chairs, and on the table is an actual china tea service.

It is very important that these things be actual because let’s say that there’s a sister sitting at the table having tea alone, and the brother slams this door as he comes in, stomping across this stage. He’s clearly in high emotion, and what we want to hear is the physicality of the wooden legs scraping across the wooden surface of the stage when he pulls back that chair to sit down and pulls himself up. When he slaps the surface of the table to make a point, we want to hear the physicality of that contact. And when the sister delicately, patiently puts down her teacup, we want to hear that gentle clink of the china on china. It’s very important that these things be real because that’s what allows us in the audience to focus on this moment in a very precise way.

For Towles, history is the painted backdrop, and he’s not interested in describing that in a hyperrealist style. He gives it an impressionist style because the role of history in his work is to provide a sense of time, of place, of mood – but that’s it.

Now in front of that, sits a lot of plywood that’s been painted to look like mahogany. This stuff he hopes makes you pause and ask “Did that actually happen or did he make that up?”

But in front of all that is the actual table and chairs. Just like in the play, it’s very important that that be very real to you. They should be so real to you that when you’re reading a scene around that table, you feel like you’re sitting at the table, and that you can read the changes in expression on the faces of the brother and sister. You can hear the nuances in their voices as they exchange their ideas and sentiments. It’s very important that this feel real to you because that’s actually where all of the action is.

Towles’ theatrical metaphor perfectly captures the essence of crafting historical fiction. History serves as the evocative backdrop, transporting readers to a specific era without getting bogged down in minutiae. This allows space for the reader’s imagination to flourish, fostering a deeper connection with the story. Towles’ intention is not to deliver a history lesson, but to create a believable atmosphere where characters and their narratives can truly shine.

At the heart of action is that single table with the china tea setting – the piece of the set that is startlingly, undeniably real. When the brother slams through the door in raging emotion, we don’t just want to see the movement – we must hear the grating screech of wooden chair legs against wooden floor. As the distressed sister delicately replaces her teacup in its saucer, that gentle clink of china on china must sing out and resonate.

Towles’s theatrical metaphor is a profound reminder that an author’s role is to create an immersive staging ground where characters can indisputably come to life for the audience. But the author’s craft is only fully realized when the players succeed in elevating the audience’s emotional experience from that of witness to full-fledged participant, intimately sharing the lives captured in that snapshot of illuminated reality.

Have you ever been swept away by a historical fiction novel that transported you to another time and place? If so, then you’ve likely experienced the magic that Amor Towles weaves with his words. Dive into one of Towles’ captivating novels and witness firsthand how he masterfully brings the past to life on the stage of his imagination. Perhaps, inspired by Towles’ approach, you’ll even pick up a pen and explore crafting your own fiction masterpiece.

Regardless, the next time you lose yourself in a captivating period drama, remember the artistry behind the scenes — the meticulous construction of a believable world where timeless human emotions take center stage.

Suggestion: start reading Amor Towles with his first novel: Rules of Civility