Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life

Rating:
Summary: Good read - and honest biographer
Review: A large and very readable account of Solzhenitsyn's life.

The book gets better as it goes along. I got the impression that this was mainly due to Thomas having more source material to work with as Solzhenitsyn aged, began to write and then became a public figure. Thomas uses (educated) speculation to fill in many of the gaps in the story of Solzhenitsyn's childhood and pre-Gulag years; as such, the weight of the narrative in the early sections of the book rests heavily upon a description of Russian history. That changes after the Gulag years - the focus is more clearly upon Solzhenitsyn as an individual, and the book gets better as a result (puzzling pieces of hyperbole such as "it is clear, from his mastery of strategy and large-scale movement of forces in "August 1914", that he could easily have become a general", and "The unborn are also victims" mercifully disappear.)

It would be unfair to blame Thomas for this - I got the impression that Solzhenitsyn is not exactly forthcoming with detailed information about his early and private lives, so perhaps Thomas was left with little alternative to the method he adopted. Added to which, Thomas is a frank biographer - being honest with the reader as to the limitations of the biographer's art.

As I've read Solzhenitsyn's major novels and "The Gulag Archipelago", I found the sections of the book dealing with his imprisonment less interesting than the parts devoted to the actual publication of the books - which read like a Cold War spy story - and his exile in the West and return to Russia.

Solzhenitsyn comes over as a difficult and turbulent character (perhaps unsurprising - given the fact that he had to have huge resources of self-belief and tenacity to survive). An interesting aspect of his character is his disdain of both modern Western society and the Communist regimes of the East - both products of post-Enlightenment materialism, and therefore both spiritually bankrupt. Uncomfortable reading for us in the West (whether or not you buy into that analysis): perhaps those who wave Solzhentisyn's works around as a vindication of modern Western society should read this biography before misrepresenting his views.

Rating:
Summary: A finely crafted work of art
Review: Alexander Solzhenitsyn's life began in 1918, near the start of a thirty-six-year bloodbath in which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its leaders, Lenin and Stalin, murdered more than sixty million people.

They committed most of their murders in out of the way places, in islands of secrecy. They buried the details beneath a petrified forest of lies.

Often, the murder victims themselves did not know that they were being murdered. They just knew that they were cold, tired, sick and starving. Then they died.

Little toads from the west, among them New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and many others, hopped through the petrified forest and said it was a paradise.

Meanwhile, Lenin and, after him, Stalin gradually bled Russia nearly to death. It was a butcher bill so horrific that today, if the victims of Communist Party of the Soviet Union had lived to have children, there would be 300 million Russians alive. Instead, there are 150 million.

Following his arrest in 1945, Alexander Solzhenitsyn gradually became the chief excavator of truth about this butchery.

His "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," which describes a day in the life of one of Stalin's prisoners, sped the collapse of the Soviet Union. His "Gulag Archipelago," which describes the Soviet Communist Party's vast network of death camps, left Stalin's western colleagues and admirers nowhere to hide.

In his finely crafted biography, "Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life," D.M Thomas, the English poet and novelist, unveils the personality and work habits which made it possible for Solzhenitsyn to write his story.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant work
Review: Can't say enough about this book. The subject's life is truly epic, spanning the Russian Revolution, World War II and the cold war. Thomas is right when he says that if you judge a writer by how he affects history, Solzhenitsyn is the greatest writer of our century. Plus his life is riveting. I loved this biography as much as any I've read since Robert Caro's wonderful LBJ Volume One. It's neat to have a novelist doing a biography too, as that seems to add a dimension here. Anyway, this is a brilliant work about a riveting subject. Can't say enough about it.

Rating:
Summary: As much about D. M. Thomas as Solzhenitsyn
Review: I first picked up the this book because of the respect I have for its author, British novelist and poet D. M. Thomas. Thomas, in addition to showing so much talent in his own work, has begun to establish himself as a well-respected expert on Russian literature.

His novels also reveal him to be very much a student of Russian literature as well. Thomas is a great lover of Akhmatova as well, and has translated many of her poems. She also figures prominently into this biography, perhaps more so than she really did in Solzhenitsyn's life. This is important because the book is much more than a biography of one writer, but a history of the literary ideal Thomas subscribes to. Compassion. The role of the literal -- the stark, raving, brutal, literal -- to bring truth to people.

Thomas includes many references to his own literary philosophy throughout the work. Perhaps if you were here only for Solzhenitsyn, these passages would seem superfluous. He also injects snippets of the Freudian analysis that dominate his own fiction. If you were unfamiliar with his work, you might think that these sections were completely ridiculous. Even though I knew why they were there, I still thought they were out of place and that Thomas was trying to interject too much of his own personality.

The details of Solzhenitsyn's life are carefully researched. It helps that Thomas is also a novelist and is often of the same mind as his subject. Many times, his insights are fabulous. However, Thomas is a bit too subjective in his description of how Solzhenitsyn managed his personal life (and Solzhenitsyn felt he was too rough on him -- ha!). In many places, he spends far too much time finding ways to excuse the author's behavior. True, he does give a voice to to many Solzhenitsyn tampled on over the years, but it rarely extends beyond sympathy -- oh, his poor wife, oh, his poor friend -- into genuine criticism of the author. Not that criticism would have been warranted either. In these, he-said, she-said, situations, cold objectivity would have probably been best. It would led the biographer down fewer blind alleys.

This particular biography is special in that it also closely ties Solzhenitsyn to the history of 20th century Russia. Historical events have obviously influenced the author's work, but Thomas also carves out Solzhenitsyn's role in history, even before he was a literary giant. That interplay is quite important, Solzhenitsyn was not safely observing history unfold, he was living right in the horrible center of it.

I thought it was a little strange that the biography really began to speed up after the Solzhenitsyn's moved to Vermont. The author had a low personal profile during this period, but was still more accessible by the Western press. The author's work was largely fruitless in the 1980's, but Thomas detaches him from history -- as if the Vermont exile had dropped him off the planet -- and lets the 80's go by in a blur. Solzhenitsyn's return to Russia is also treated superficially, and it seemed like Thomas, without any influencial new works from the author to talk about in this period, was just trying to get it over with. But in a way, it was quite consistent with Solzhenitsyn's stature in the 1990's: his work was so literal and so tied to specific events, that the generations in ascendency at the end of 20th century could no longer relate to it personally. Why talk up the author if no one else was doing so?

I came away with a much greater appreciation for D. M. Thomas's fiction and poetry. Maybe that makes this biography, I don't know, less professional? But to me, that was an unexpected bonus.

Rating:
Summary: As much about D. M. Thomas as Solzhenitsyn
Review: I first picked up the this book because of the respect I have for its author, British novelist and poet D. M. Thomas. Thomas, in addition to showing so much talent in his own work, has begun to establish himself as a well-respected expert on Russian literature.

His novels also reveal him to be very much a student of Russian literature as well. Thomas is a great lover of Akhmatova as well, and has translated many of her poems. She also figures prominently into this biography, perhaps more so than she really did in Solzhenitsyn's life. This is important because the book is much more than a biography of one writer, but a history of the literary ideal Thomas subscribes to. Compassion. The role of the literal -- the stark, raving, brutal, literal -- to bring truth to people.

Thomas includes many references to his own literary philosophy throughout the work. Perhaps if you were here only for Solzhenitsyn, these passages would seem superfluous. He also injects snippets of the Freudian analysis that dominate his own fiction. If you were unfamiliar with his work, you might think that these sections were completely ridiculous. Even though I knew why they were there, I still thought they were out of place and that Thomas was trying to interject too much of his own personality.

The details of Solzhenitsyn's life are carefully researched. It helps that Thomas is also a novelist and is often of the same mind as his subject. Many times, his insights are fabulous. However, Thomas is a bit too subjective in his description of how Solzhenitsyn managed his personal life (and Solzhenitsyn felt he was too rough on him -- ha!). In many places, he spends far too much time finding ways to excuse the author's behavior. True, he does give a voice to to many Solzhenitsyn tampled on over the years, but it rarely extends beyond sympathy -- oh, his poor wife, oh, his poor friend -- into genuine criticism of the author. Not that criticism would have been warranted either. In these, he-said, she-said, situations, cold objectivity would have probably been best. It would led the biographer down fewer blind alleys.

This particular biography is special in that it also closely ties Solzhenitsyn to the history of 20th century Russia. Historical events have obviously influenced the author's work, but Thomas also carves out Solzhenitsyn's role in history, even before he was a literary giant. That interplay is quite important, Solzhenitsyn was not safely observing history unfold, he was living right in the horrible center of it.

I thought it was a little strange that the biography really began to speed up after the Solzhenitsyn's moved to Vermont. The author had a low personal profile during this period, but was still more accessible by the Western press. The author's work was largely fruitless in the 1980's, but Thomas detaches him from history -- as if the Vermont exile had dropped him off the planet -- and lets the 80's go by in a blur. Solzhenitsyn's return to Russia is also treated superficially, and it seemed like Thomas, without any influencial new works from the author to talk about in this period, was just trying to get it over with. But in a way, it was quite consistent with Solzhenitsyn's stature in the 1990's: his work was so literal and so tied to specific events, that the generations in ascendency at the end of 20th century could no longer relate to it personally. Why talk up the author if no one else was doing so?

I came away with a much greater appreciation for D. M. Thomas's fiction and poetry. Maybe that makes this biography, I don't know, less professional? But to me, that was an unexpected bonus.

Rating:
Summary: Thomas hits the mark...
Review: If you're a student or fan of the Russian poet/novelist, then this book is a must-read. It is a superb critical biography of the man who is a giant in the literary world. The book enlightens the reader on Solzhenitsyn's life and politics, in his timeless as well as his contemporary significance.

As is the subject of being written about, this is a giant read - 559 pages in hardcover edition. This is not only a finely wrought literary biography but also a chronicle of twentieth-century Russian history.

Thomas was masterful in his research, ferreting out the myriad substance that forms the great Russian author/writer. A rich and rewarding read.

Rating:
Summary: Often rough but ambitious
Review: Look, why I love D.M. Thomas's book "Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life" has little to do with how well the end product reads. This book is almost 150 pages too long, and rambles sometimes when the author is fighting with socially, politically and artistically complex balances of ideas expressed in narrative form. His subject is tricky, the time is difficult to explain in retrospect, and the beliefs of his subject are also both controversial and threatening. So, while he obviously had to get liquored up to [type] out some of these pages that are raw compilations of event which prepare us for the setting of future microdramas in the life of his subject, he tackled head on the difficult parts and made some poetic connections between the eras and symbols in the life of a great writer. In that ability to find hidden beauties, Thomas transcends being a biographer; the bulk of the book however is an average biography. I would recommend this to anyone with the momentum to get through 300 pages before beginning The Great Skim To The End. I will read more of Mr. Thomas' work, as he has impressed me as a perceptive observer of life and its people.

Rating:
Summary: a masterful piece of literature!
Review: Tedious? Hardly! This critical biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a brilliant and masterful piece of work. Solzhenitsyn's life and art, his epic and singular 20th century struggle, are persuasively treated with courage and truthfulness, and absolutely first-class literary accomplishment by novelist D. M. Thomas. Rarely have I encountered a more affecting piece of biographical literature! Solzhenitsyn's complexities seem to overload the century, and Thomas' patient and exceptionally intelligent narrative follows the thread of every turn with a novelist's master plan giving us, in the end, a scorching and beautiful appreciation of one of the rare writers of the 20th century. The book is a compendium of modern Russian history as much as anything else, and it serves its subject well in refusing to varnish either the man or his milieu; Soviet history, especially with respect to the jarred lives of most of its great artists, is already known as one of history's great tragedies, and Thomas traces Solzhenitsyn's life-long transformation from Soviet man to Russian icon with meticulous care, and with a miraculous understanding of the wayward chagrin of history not often articulated in the biographer's art. It's a massive book, yet because every word is made essential the narrative sails with genuine authority, and with a special beauty. This is an important book, I would say even a gifted book, as indeed befits the story of one of the authentic geniuses of modern literature. Highest recommendation without reservation.

Rating:
Summary: World history and the Russian novel
Review: The Russian novel is an historical mystery, the last act of which gives us the great ones of Solzhenitsyn, whose life is told here briskly and well without hagiography and it adds up just as well to a snapshot version of Russian history that is to the point and acute in its indirect analysis of a suffering and quite mad civilization given a knockout blow by the novelist's exposure of the Gulags. The anti-modernism of Solzhenitsyn weighs in to the measure of the effect, but it would seem merely Dostoeyevskian liability at this point. Hits the mark.

Rating:
Summary: A Shockingly Beautiful Biography of a Powerful Man!
Review: This book touched me in ways I had not anticipated! The author brings Solzhenitsyn's life to the lay man in easy-to-understand terminology and fascinating facts. I could not put this very thick book down; from the moment I got it I was enthralled. The rich characters and cultural reflections given in this book are enough to make any Russian history buff salivate! I was inspired and truly blessed by this amazing biography.