… it turned out that I couldn’t manage “simply to read”: my hand was always reaching out to note down my judgment, my appraisal, either of a particular aspect or in general—of the author’s techniques, structure, characters, the views expressed. I noted specific quotes, too. But when you’ve made such a quantity of notes, you don’t want to leave them around gathering dust, either: you have to work up your notes and put them into some kind of harmonious form, into a coherent text. And in this way, based on a disparate selection of books, a collection formed—they weren’t literary reviews exactly, no, just my impressions. And now, as more are added, I’ve started calling this my “Literary Collection.” Perhaps more will accumulate in the coming years.
Dave also sends along this: Truth In Exile.
Solzhenitsyn drew the appropriate conclusion: the western media was now aping propaganda techniques of the KGB—i.e., condemning books that had not been read or even discussed and “sticking crude political labels onto complex works of literature.” When the English language version finally appeared, the critical appraisals of the book were largely positive and appreciative of the wisdom and humility in the book. But it was already too late. Call it Cold War cancel culture. The episode was also a foreshadowing of the control political correctness would exercise over public discourse in America in the post-Cold War period.
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