Tuesday, August 5, 2008

RIP: Alexander Solzhenitsyn



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"A great writer is, so to speak, a secret government in his country."


Posted by Matt at 12:19 Image

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4 comments:

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    lowenkopf5/8/08 23:13

    Satire craves a landscape of realness if not reality, a distinction I'll be pleased to discuss with you although I suspect you get it big time. Satire has to be as real as, say the recent New Yorker cover about the Obamas which offended as many Obamists as the actual target. Enough readers believed Swift's Modest Proposal to give it its effect. I come from the position of believing satire not only tears down by irony/ridicule, it also points a finger at a moral solution.

    Yeah, yeah, I know--definitions. Lots of people conflate parody with satire. The former is fun by ridicule, the latter is supercharged with moral outrage.

    Enjoyed the content of your posts. Thanks for the visit. Shelly Lowenkopf

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    Heather6/8/08 00:37

    Oh, to have a tenth of Solzhenitsyn's talent.

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    Matt6/8/08 16:40

    Shelly - again, you have distilled your insights so well (and I'm not the type to easily gush). I slammed into the satire/reality wall when I was reading Julian Barnes' "England England": a great concept which buckled under weight of its author's wishlist (reviewed here in June).

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

    M

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    Matt6/8/08 16:43

    Heather - I've thought a lot about Solzhenitsyn and others "like" him, who were - at their peak - lions of creativity, and yet in their later years nearly betrayed the things they once stood for. It's a fascinating, tragic phenomena which I would like to write about in a forthcoming essay.

    This unfortunately requires research, which "SAW V"'s greedy post schedule probably won't allow any time soon. We shall see.

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