In The First Circle, The Uncensored Edition by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In The First Circle, The Uncensored Edition by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This is the first novel released after Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's death in 2008. It includes a lot of strong political and philosophical statements about the Soviet Union, especially an indictment of the atomic bomb and the prison system in the old Soviet Union. This is a much stronger political statement than his earlier works, One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago.

In The First Circle refers to the first circle of hell where the virtuous pagans go in Dante's inferno. The setting is in a sharaska, a minimum security prison for engineers, intellectuals, and other political undesirables. Here the prisoners work 12 hours a day making things for the state like listening devices, torpedoes, and other things. It is a place on the edge where forbidden ideas can be explored.

The book mostly plods along telling the life of the prisoners, the guards, and the bureaucrats who created the prison. The story stretches outside of the prison to include the prisoners wives and lovers as well as the creators of the whole Soviet system.

Stalin is one of the main characters. Every few chapters the lead characters change. The author is trying to create a sweeping drama over the 740 pages of the novel. Stalin as a character is superbly frightening. He demonstrates fear, paranoia, and ambition at its fullest capacity. Solzhenitsyn is at his best in this novel when he is describing bureaucratic terror or black comedic irony.

There is a short story, The Buddha's Smile about Eleanor Roosevelt visiting a high security prison. It describes how the guards prepare the prisoners. The story is a reflection on how the Soviet system attempted to create a false picture of well being to the world. Every bit of the novel drips contradiction.

This contradiction is best reflected in the prisoners arguments with each other about ideas; communism, capitalism, imperialism, the church and other ideas are discussed freely inside where they cannot be discussed outside because of fear of going to prison. The prisoners also read novels that are a reflection on the novel. The Man In The Iron Mask, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy are mentioned.

There is a definite sense of right and wrong throughout the novel. This is an example of Russian realism. There is clear good and evil. Added to this sense of evil is a spattering of mysticism. A prisoner is trying to the paint the castle of the holy grail, the mathematicians attempting to make a listening device are referred to as rosicrucians, and there is a sad visit to the remnants of a Russian orthodox church.

Most of In The First Circle is steady excellent craftsmanship. I wondered at points about the translation; whether the translator needed to pick better wording. However, at moments the writing becomes sublime espcially when the author is describing irony or bureaucratic terror. This novel reflects on the darkness in the human heart and the ability to live with the impossible. It is filled with deep intellectual thought and is slow going. If you want to read a complex novel in the traditional Russian style you will like this.

Daily Thoughts 1/8/2010

Lucida handwriting. It has been proposed that schools in the United States eliminate handwriting. Handwriting was one of my strong points in school. I always had excellent penmanship. It encouraged me to read. There is something disquieting about eliminating cursive handwriting from the elementary schools.

Daily Thoughts 1/8/2010

I have been working on finding more local authors. It seems that there are two organizations that feed into where many of our local authors come from, The Cross Bronx, a Showcase for Bronx writers http://crossbronx.wordpress.com/ and The Hudson Valley Writers Center http://www.writerscenter.org/ . I am almost half way through the Westchester Authors list.

I finished reading In The First Circle the First Uncensored Edition on the way home from work. I found it to be at points superb and fascinating. At other points it was just solid writing. It wavered between absolutely incredible and mediocre. Maybe it was the translator. I am not really sure.

I also finished watching I Claudius. I enjoyed the series tremendously. Rome has always fascinated me. When I was a teenager, I read a mix of Roman history and science fiction. I especially liked Of the Nature of Things by Lucretius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, The Golden Ass by Apuleius, and the Enchiridion by Epictetus. I remember my father reading me The Odyssey by Homer when I was young.

Maybe there is something compelling about finishing things. I like to finish what I start whether it is a book, a television series or a project like looking up local authors. This is true even if it is something which I am not particularly great at. There is a certain satisfaction in finishing things. I tend to finish what I start.

I have started reading Brain Rules 12 Principles of Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina.

Looked at The Penguin Classics Graphic Covers. My favorite is the whale by Tony Millionaire.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbuckleydesign/sets/72157621852113991/

Daily Thoughts 1/7/2009

Café Griensteidl in Vienna, printing by Reinhold Völkel, 1896

Daily Thoughts 1/7/2009

Today is a day for departmental reports for the month. It is my turn to write the one for this month. We try to keep our reports to a single page.

I also had some time to look at reviews. There is a forthcoming book which seems interesting, You Are Not A Gadget A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier which looks interesting.

I've been looking at more local authors; Jean Craighead George lives in Westchester county. There is also a new label for the religious fiction.

I am almost finished reading In The First Circle. There is one chapter that stands out among all the chapters called The Buddha's Smile on page 420. It is the story of a visit by Eleanor Roosevelt to a Russian prison. The guards rush in and change everything before her visit. Then when it is all over all is left from Eleanor Roosevelt's visit is a small statue of the smiling buddha. It has a very zen feeling to it. There are minor touches of mysticism throughout the book. A painter is painting a picture of the castle of the holy grail, some mathematicians are called rosicrucians. Even the material on the Russian orthodox church has an aura to it. It is sad in a kind of lilting way.

Daily Thoughts 1/6/2010

Affiche Encre L. Marquet 1892

Daily Thoughts 1/6/2010

On the train to work, I read some more of In the First Circle. It is an excellent reminder of why there is no good reason to be in prison. It reminds us of the want of female company by men in prison and the endless boredom and drabness of prison life combined with the constant surveillance. What is interesting and different about this prison is that many of the men are engineers trying to design electrical systems, torpedos, and other inventions. There is a certain irony in the prisoners trying to develop a device to identify voices over the telephone. It is one of the better qualities of the book.

I have been working more on identifying authors websites in Westchester. I have three pages of links right now. There are some interesting authors, Rosemary Wells who writes childrens books, Esmeralda Santiago, and Jonathan Tropper all have interesting author websites.

I checked my Google Webmaster Tools to see who was visiting my blog. These are four sites that seemed interesting about books.

Bookish Ruthhttp://www.bookishruth.com/

Imaginary Landshttp://imaginarylands.wordpress.com/

The Book Smugglershttp://thebooksmugglers.com/

Literary Nobodyhttp://www.literarynobody.com/

I spent some time weeding the 800s today. I am moving ahead of the person who is putting in the new security devices in the 800s. Sometimes when you look through the older books, you find things which are charming. Some of the histories of childrens books are fascinating. One of my favorite books is The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition by Lewis Carroll, Martin Gardner and John Tenniel. The annotations add little bits of philosophy throughout the book. I also took a few minutes to look at Beyond the Wild Wood The World of Kenneth Grahame Author of the Wind in The Willows by Peter Green. It had many photographs from the Victorian english countryside. I sometimes think that authors like Beatrix Potter have greater lasting value than the more adult classics.

Daily Thoughts 1/3/2010

Stan Sakai at WonderCon 2009.28 February 2009(2009-02-28)This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License by Brokensphereon on Wikimedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stan_Sakai_at_WonderCon_2009_1.JPG Stan Sakai is the author of Usagi Yojimbo.

Daily Thoughts 1/3/2010

Usagi Yojimbo Yokai by Stan Sakai

Miyamoto Usagi is a ronin, a roaming unaffilitated samurai in this graphic novel. The character is loosely based on Miyamoto Musashi. The setting is a medieval japan populated by mythical creatures and anthropomorphic animals. Miyamoto Usagi is a rabbit. The graphic novel by Stan Sakai has been running for 25 years. This book was specifically produced for the 25th anniversary of the comic. It has won a variety of awards including the Eisner Award, the Inkpot Award, an American Library Association award, and many others. The writing and drawing is very entertaining.

This edition is a standalone edition. The colors are done with watercolors which is not like most American comics. Stan Sakai is from Hawaii. It adds a different feeling to the comic. The lines are also very strong and fluid. This makes the characters well defined. The background is a medieval Japan with some unusual touches, oversize mushrooms, some strange animals, it transports you to a mythical place.

The story takes place on the night of Oborozuki-Yo (the hazy moon) at the same time it is tied with the Yokai (haunts). This gives the author license to introduce ghosts, demons, and spirits from Japanese mythology as well as some of his own fanciful creations. Some of there are silly like the tentacle beast, and some of them are mythological like the fox spirit and the fire breathing salamander.

At the end of the book, there is an interview with Stan Sakai. He details the design, panel layout, writing, and research into Japanese folklore to create the story. He also talks about his work with Sergio Aragones as a letterer for the comic Groo.

This comic was fun to read with plenty of color, action, monsters, and folklore.

I wrote this review while I was sitting in the laundromat. Then I rewrote it a bit while I am sitting at the computer.

I also had time to read a little bit more of In The First Circle. Right now, I am at the point where Stalin is a character in the book. He is rather self important and more than a little deadly in an uncompromising ironhanded way. If Stalin is insulting the other characters, they will live, otherwise if he is quiet, they die. Every couple of chapters the main characters change. This is a very hard thing to do.

Stalin makes several literary references inside the book which is different. He praises the book, Iosif Vissaronovich Stalin: Short Biography and he describes how he made sure that the book portrayed him in a positive light. Later Stalin also praises the book Tito: Traitor In Chief by Renaud de Jourenel one of his rivals.

I watched a bit more of the BBC production of I Claudius. I am up to Chapter 6 which is called Reign of Terror. Tiberius is running the Roman empire with an ironhand and accusing many people of treason. Soon, Caligula will be in power.

Daily Thoughts 1/2/2009

Russian writer and Nobel prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn looks out from a train, in Vladivostok, summer 1994, before departing on a journey across Russia. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after nearly 20 years in exile. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev, 1994, Gnu Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Daily Thoughts 1/2/2009

I am reading In The First Circle, The First Uncensored Edition by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This is the first posthumous book after his death in 2008. So far, the writing is entertaining and extremely well crafted. The title, The First Circle, refers to Dante Alighieri's first circle in hell where virtuous pagans are sent when the die in his book Inferno. Most of the action occurs in a sharaska, a minimum security prison in Russia.

Today is a day to work on the displays. I put up a new display of books which we have in storage for horror genre books. I picked out some titles by Robert Bloch, Graham Masterton, Kim Newman, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and H.P. Lovecraft. I also added the complete short stories of Edgar Allen Poe. Horror is very popular. More popular than science fiction in the library I work in.

We also put up a display of books and videos on African American leaders. We might also add some audiobooks to make the display truly multimedia.

Right now, I am also going to update the current events and people in the news display. I went through and updated the lobby display for gardening and added a few books to the oversize art books in the display cases in our gallery. We have a small art gallery supported by a local arts organization in our library.

Some more books came in for me to read, I now have a few more books added to my to read pile; Usagi Yojimbo Yokai by Stan Sakai. This is one of my favorite comics, it is a furry samurai comic book. The main character is based on Musashi and is an anthropomorphic rabbit. There is a lot of fighting and many mythical creatures from Japan as well as ninjas, samurais, thieves, gamblers, and outlaws of various persuasions in the stories. The next book is Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford, Jane Austen as a modern day vampire. The last one is The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part II from Bastille to Baghdad by Larry Gonick. I enjoyed his previous books on ancient history, The Cartoon History of the Universe, Parts I, II, and III.

I am preparing for the next graphic novels club which is on January 25, 2009. I am hoping to focus on Watchmen and other comics by Alan Moore.

I just put in my new day by day desk calendar and threw out the old one. It is one of the first things to do during the new year.

Having read some more of The First Circle, I am beginning to realize that this will take me quite a while to read. It has the depth of thought and feeling of the great russian novels like Crime and Punishment. There is a strong sense of ironic realism. This includes a lot of philosophical ground which is already starting to reveal itself; Dante, Goethe, Lenin, Stalin, mathematics, liberalism, nazism, totalitarianism, communism, the secret police are only a few subjects that the novel has touched on in the first fifty pages.