group discussion

Maybe we can all say something about the impact his books had on us... For me, I was moved by "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" not only because of the subject matter but for his writing; I couldn't put it down.

Here's one link to today's news:
http://ap.google.com/article/A...

I'm sorry to hear that Solzhenitsyn has passed. He lived a full life, however, and it was nice that he made his way home before passing.

He was just such a major writer, it's hard to know where to begin to talk about him. Those books (Gulag and Day in the Life, and also his non-fiction - holy smoke, what a grasp of history the guy had) are so remarkable and powerful and perhaps the most important element is that they contain real human stories. I'm just babbling and scratching the surface here, but I always considered him a very rare breed. I read his recent work "The Russia Question at the End of the 20th Century" - that's where I realized his knowledge of history was so vast. A very impressive read and argument.

I have always distinguished between Solzhenitsyn the writer, and Solzhenitsyn a political and social figure. I appreciate him very much, as a social figure, however, I have always believed that he was not a great writer. I am not, by any means, trying to derogate his efforts and achievements, but any short story by Varlam Shalamov is worth the GULAG and Ivan Denisovich taken together. Furthermore, by the end of his life Solzhenitsyn acquired this air of self-congratulatory "dissident celebrity" (oxymoronic, if you ask me) that began to really annoy me, and many others. Regardless of all this, he managed to shake Russians out of the cattle-like obedience to the rulers and now we may need him and his works more than before.