A while back I made the distinction between Solzhenitsyn the prophet, writing to expose to the world the evils of the Gulag and the Communist system, and Solzhenitysn the writer. I don't mean that these aspects are in contradiction with each other, maybe another way to look at it is the kinds of stories Solzhenitsyn tells, (Solzhenitsyn the prophet) and the way he tells his stories (Solzhenitysn the writer).
What do I notice as the way he tells a story? Here are a few ideas.
1) He tells the story from several different viewpoints. Cancer Ward, First Circle, and the narrative parts of Red Wheel have lots of different characters. One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is different, but then Solzhenitsyn doesn't actually consider this a novel, (I forget the exact term).
2) The story does not all take place inside the character's minds, but the story is not all outward events either.
3) Despite facing very grim and difficult problems, the characters are not all overcome by the futility of life, and everything doesn't go wrong. Stories don't have universally happy endings, neither do they have universally sad endings.
4) A significant part of the story involves the characters reading books, thinking about books and commenting on them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment