I find it really difficult to teach stories that I find flawless or basically flawless. Take for instance "The Swimmer," which I taught this morning. I love this story. Objectively speaking it's one the best stories ever written. I really feel that the story speaks for itself, and that any attempt to discuss what it's about in detail is a lot like clubbing the story to death and then dissecting its corpse.

My ideal lesson for "The Swimmer" goes a little something like this: So, who found this story confusing? All right, well, what if every time the story talks about water, it's really talking about alcohol? And what if all this stuff didn't really happen over just single day, but over the course of years? Okay, go read it again. One minute.

Only I'm paid to talk for fifty minutes. So it's clubbing and dissecting for me.