I thought First Circle was great, couldn't get into Ivan Denisovich, and was very disappointed in Gulag.
First Circle was made into a TV miniseries on Russian TV a few years ago. part of which is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGqZOZBdd08
--- On Tue, 8/5/08, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
> From: wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89 (NY Times)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, August 5, 2008, 5:28 PM
> This is a slightly different take on the topic than the one
> that has
> been going on, and slightly influenced by some of the
> conversations
> going on in the comments section of Lenin's Tomb, but I
> was
> wondering what folks thoughts were on the literary
> reputation of S.
> I had read both One Day in the Life of and Cancer Ward some
> time
> ago, and thought that the first novel was quite good and
> that Cancer
> Ward was good if somewhat uneven. I tried to read some of
> the later
> work and thought that it read like turgid Tolstoy fanfic
> (not at the
> time, but that is the best term that I can come up with
> right now).
> I didn't really get far enough into it to get to the
> politics. I've
> had the opinion that the work really went downhill fast
> after the
> first two novels (and that the Soviet editor that S.
> ignored on
> Cancer Ward was probably right in his comments), but I
> would be
> curious to get other views on this, particularly folks who
> made it
> through some other books like First Circle.
>
> robert wood
>
>
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