The GA is a different sort of thing. IT isn't really literature at all. It's a compendenium of information, stories, rumors -- basically a former zek dumping his clipping file on the floor, Some bits are good, some are interesting, some are just myths, but it's not a literary account of Gulag in the way that Ginsberg's Into The Whirlwind is, much less Natasha MAndestam's Hope Agaisnt Hope and Hope Abandoned. I got rid of vols 2 and 3, they seemed much of a muchness to me. But IU kept vol. 1.
For a history of the Gulag, read Medvedev (from the left) or Conquest (from the right), both are good, solid, and as far as I know reliable works, though Conquest's body count is way too high, as we know from Getty's and other research.
--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Having really, really enjoyed First Circle and the
> seemingly endlessly to be commented on by people who
> haven't read it because it hasn't been translated
> 200
> Year Together, I finally got around to reading
> Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. Unfortunately, I
> really do not think it is very good -- not bad, but
> no
> way did this book deserve a Nobel Prize for
> Literature. It's just one long repetitive rant.
> (admittedly, I'm not that relatively far into it and
> I'm reading it in English translation, which I
> shouldn't, in an abridged form, so maybe I'm missing
> something.)
>
> Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>
>
>
>
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