In the late 1970s over a period of about two years I read many of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's most notable novels including One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, The Cancer Ward, The Gulag Archipelago, and The First Circle. It was a life changing experience. Like two other great modern Russian writers Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn is very wordy, reading The Gulag Archipelago is like reading War and Peace, it goes on and on and on ad infinatum.
       One must have a very high level of education to muddle through Solzhenitsyn's work. One must also have a great deal of free time in addition to a whole lot of determination and self-discipline in order to put forth the Herculean effort it takes to read the several thousand pages of his books. It is just as well because if too many people were to read his books there would be chaos in the streets.
       I am painfully aware that there are those cretins who have never read Solzhenitsyn who will come up with an infantile put-down psychoanalysis of his work which will be one hundred per cent backed up by some literary douchebag of impeccable reputation who has won a bunch of awards. It comes with the territory.
       For some unfathomable reason my favorite Solzhenitsyn novel The First Circle is not even mentioned in the online obituary ( he died August 3 )link below. In truth I disagree with much of the analysis in this article but it is nevertheless better than anything I could have written myself so I link to it here in tribute to a man whose work I much admire. The second link to the online International Herald Tribune obituary is a little better but still dwells too much on the political aspect of Solzhenitsyn's work.
       Inset: 1953 photo of Solzhenitsyn upon his release from gulag






Solzhenitsyn Broke Taboos

Russians reflect on loss

Click here to read Solzhenitsyn's controversial June 1978 commencement speech at Harvard University