(Our kickoff post is here, and our discussion posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)
So we decided that we needed a week to breathe and so we’re taking this week as a week to catch up.
In the meantime, here’s something I found while digging: it’s “a class project for Russian Literature 227”. They made their own interpretation of Chapter 21: “Give Us Back the Death Penalty!”
For next week, we’re going to be reading from Chapter 66 Going to the People (Chapter 61 in the Red Version) to Chapter 80 One Hundred Forty Seven Rubles (Chapter 74). It looks like Chapter 77, The Decision Taken was not included in the expurgated version.
I confess I’m still far behind in my reading.
One thing that strikes me is the constantly shifting point of view. Solzhenitsen uses the device of shifting limited-omniscient points of view remarkably well to illustrate the utter absurdity of the situation. By the time he meditates on the paranoia of Stalin and the mixture of political gobbledegook and historical trivia that passes for political conformity and the mindless crush of bureaucracy perpetuating itself for its own sake like a cancer nearing metastasis, it’s clear that the real problem with the Soviet state is not its downright silly ideology but its debilitating gloat in its governmental apparatus.Report
Another handicap I suffer (if you can call it that) from is that my free reading time is Sunday afternoons in my back yard. Ninety degree afternoons cooled down with orange-basil cocktails is probably not quite the same level of privation intended by the author. And it lends to composition mistakes from my tablet.Report
I’m hoping that, even though it’s intense on more than one level, it’s fun to read on another.
That’s one of the things that makes me feel guilty about it, anyway. I’m having fun reading it.Report
In Russia, fun has you!Report