Solzhenitsyn.

One day when I was about ten years old I was downtown with my mother. I am not sure what it was she was shopping for, but at one point we turned into this store that had floor-to-ceiling books. Looking back on it I think I was the one who dragged her in there.
I begged her to buy me some books. So she told me to pick one or two out.
I have never forgotten which two I chose. The first was one of the Star Trek paperbacks, written by James Blish. I don’t recall the exact title. [And really, would it matter?]
The other book, was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.
Even back then, in and around my first decade of life, my literary tastes were severely eclectic.
Truth is, I had (of course) absolutely no idea what I was doing, handing my mother this book. Nor did she, taking it from my hands as I said “I want this one, too.”
But I was always melancholic and just weird, and what intrigued me was the blandness of the silver-grey cover of the book, the way the barbwire in the backround penned in the obscured silhouettes of bland-faced prisoners, and the fact that Alexander was spelled “Aleksandr” on this Harper & Row edition, which indeed, came out in 1973, the year I turned ten.
And the typeface was so small. I have always been drawn to small print.
My mother did buy me the book. Both of them.
Did I read Gulag though?
No.
I read the Star Trek one. I definitely remember reading the Star Trek one. When all was said and done, space-ships were more my speed, but I liked to aim high.... hence, the Solzhenitsyn.

Confession: I have the book today. I still have that old silver paperback. But I also have a dandy nice hardcover edition, and have vowed vehemently to read it. Why? Because I have read so many other books by this author [Cancer Ward, The First Circle, One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich] along with biographies of the man and I find his fictional work, alongside his personal history, utterly fascinating.
About three or four summers ago, I gave the Gulag another shot.
I got to page 340 [of 620] and I stopped. There is still a bookmark, right there at page 340. It is a tough read. There are no two ways about it! The injustice gets to you. It is almost unbearable, to read of the atrocious injustice of the Gulag, where Solzhenitsyn spent ten years of his life in servitude.
Slave-itude.

I could say so much more about Solzhenitsyn, telling you why I think he is one of the most important writers to have ever put pen or pencil to paper.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.
His Nobel speech is well worth the reading.
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1970/solzhenitsyn-autobio.html

For now, I will leave you with a few words I once wrote, about his novel One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich.

THEME: Personal struggle for survival in a Stalinist concentration camp. A more literal translation of the title from the Russian would be "The Day Of Ivan Denisovich".
This "one day" is seen through the eyes of the hero Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a humble peasant who during WWII was captured by the Germans. After his escape he came back to the Russian lines where he was arrested, accused of being an enemy spy (forced by Soviet counterintelligence officers to sign his own "confession"), and sentenced to ten years hard labor.
The story follows the routine details of Shukhov's life: jolted out of a frozen slumber at 5 a.m.; a breakfast of slop and boiled gruel with fish skeletons floating next to rotten cabbage leaves; roll call in the polar frost, followed by a ravenous-dog-escorted march to work where prisoners mix cement and build walls in the utter desolation of the Northern steppe. The author's depiction of this ceaseless slavery is literally mind-numbing.

On the way back to the barracks the men are meticulously searched for anything they may be attempting to smuggle in. Shukhov privately revels over a piece of wire and a string that he has managed to sneak past the guards. After all, who knows how vitally necessary these items may be "one day"! At the end of this particular day's near-deathly labor, Shukhov actually feels fortunate that he has managed to finagle an extra bowl of skeleton soup, get some shreds of tobacco, and keep from being thrust into solitary confinement for any one of the million minor offenses of the camp.
The story ends: "The end of an unclouded day. Almost a happy one. Just one of the 3,653 days of his sentence, from bell to bell. The extra three were for leap years." The final point reminding us of the Gulag system's merciless punitive accuracy. A world of no parole... and no reprieve.

The reader is chilled by this book. It is shivering. Do we pick up anything by Solzhenitsyn for its "warmth and fuzziness"? Most definitely not. We pick him up to come face to face with mankind's capacity to methodically inflict cruelty and despair upon others. In the process, we are always afforded a very important glimpse of what those "others" can endure. And we set Solzhenitsyn down, thankful that we are none of his characters... even as we realize that some very real people (including the author himself) did not have that luxury.

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