Book Reviews
Gulag Archipelago — Aleksandr Solzenhenitsyn
Review By:
Eric Krupin
Review written by Eric Krupin: “The point can’t be made forcefully enough: this book is *not* a novel! It is not even literature, in any meaningful sense. It is a 2,000 page indictment for crimes against humanity. Chief among the accused is of course Stalin who, if justice exists, is currently serving 60 million consecutive life sentences in Hell. But as Solzhenitsyn abundantly documents, the Gulag death-camps were part of Lenin’s vision from the very beginning. (In January 1918, he stated his ambition of “purging the land of all kinds of harmful insects”, in which group he included “workers malingering at their work”.) But it is not only the architects of Bolshevism who stand accused. It is also all the collaborators with oppression, from the camp guards who summarily executed prisoners too exhausted to stand to the people who informed on their neighbors. Complicit even are the passive victims of the Terror who, as Solzhenitsyn says, “didn’t love freedom enough” to fight for it from the beginning.
Needless to say, “The Gulag Archipelago” is not beach reading. (Although Solzhenitsyn’s searingly sarcastic style makes it anything but a dry collection of facts.) The evil that it obsessively documents is so dark that even reading about it is often difficult to bear. But anyone with pretentions of understanding the world we live in needs to go through it from first page to last.
But if you aren’t willing to make the effort, here’s the lesson boiled down for you: Totalitarianism doesn’t begin with a Stalin or a Hitler. It begins with *you*, on the day that you let a government become more powerful than the people it governs. Remember that or someday it might not be the Russians or the Jews or the Serbs that the men with guns come for. It just might be you…”
The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Reviewd By:
Jason Cigan
If a greater novel than THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV has ever been written, I haven’t found it yet.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, unquestionably among the greatest novelists of all time, finished his literary career on an emphatic note, publishing KARAMAZOV only a few months before his death. Herein are all of the masterful themes, motifs, and devices of Dostoevsky’s earlier works, all converging in one culminating masterpiece: the chilling, penetrating introspection and gut-wrenching humanity of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; the contrary depiction of man’s capability to do good of THE IDIOT; the intrigue and dark satire of DEMONS; and the existentialistic inquisitiveness and philosophical investigation patent to NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND. Throw in an impeccably diverse and symbolic cast of characters; a gripping plot; and an inumberable quantity of subplots, moral struggles, and ideological discussion, and the end result is an epic tragedy that will evoke, throughout its course, the full range of emotions of its reader.
KARAMAZOV prominently features the most thoroughly unsympathetic literary character since… well, does Satan from THE BIBLE count? This character is the patriarch of the eponymous siblings, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, and he is everything that is detestable and despicable about human nature: a liar, an adulterer, a penny-pincher, an absent father, a womanizer, and possibly worse. He has fathered four children (presumably; the novel accounts for three and hints at a fourth), and raised none of them. But that’s not the worst of what he’s done. What is? Well, I won’t spoil it for you now.
The four brothers of the title each represent a different embodiment of the Russian spirit and, by extension, the human spirit. The eldest, Mitya, is a materialist, a sensualist, or whatever other euphemism you choose to use in place of “playboy”. Ivan, the next oldest, is an intellectual, an atheist, and an idealist–he is the most prosperous and practical of the brothers. Alyosha, the half-brother of Mitya and Ivan, is the kindly, spiritual, and caring Karamazov; Dostoevsky considers Alyosha to be the novel’s protagonist. Smerdyakov, the suspected fourth brother, is sly, meddling, and cruel. Everyone should be able to find all of the chief traits of his or her self amongst these four brothers–they are a brilliant microcosm of all mankind.
KARAMAZOV will keep you riveted and engaged despite its notable length and density. It is at once a murder mystery, a psychological thriller, a courtroom drama, a philosophical journey, and an intellectual masterwork. From the haunting religious criticism of Ivan’s prose poem “The Grand Inquistor” to the satirical brilliance of “The Devil” to the ambiguously concise, emotionally overwhelming finale, this is pure genius. It’s just a shame that Dostoevsky died before he could complete the trilogy of which KARAMAZOV was meant to only be the beginning.
I can hardly begin to describe how profoundly this novel affected me. I completed it at the age of 16, just as I began my senior year of high school. In the mere six months since, I have devoted the majority of my free time to reading and studying literature–largely thanks to the influence of Dostoevsky. The influence of this novel has been felt in all facets of world culture: KARAMAZOV has earned accolades from Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and Pope Benedict XVI, among millions of others–myself just one of them. I can’t emphasize strongly enough how outstanding THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is.