The Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dies at 89. The NY Times has a lengthy obituary, which recounts Solzhenitsyn’s life and writing. One striking example of his energy, ingenuity, and character is the length he went to, while imprisoned, to write his first novel A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich:
At Ekibastuz, any writing would be seized as contraband. So he devised a method that enabled him to retain even long sections of prose. After seeing Lithuanian Catholic prisoners fashion rosaries out of beads made from chewed bread, he asked them to make a similar chain for him, but with more beads. In his hands, each bead came to represent a passage that he would repeat to himself until he could say it without hesitation. Only then would he move on to the next bead. He later wrote that by the end of his prison term, he had committed to memory 12,000 lines in this way.
Harper Perennial publishes all three volumes of his non-fiction work The Gulag Archipelago, as well as an abridged version, and will re-issue his novel The First Circle in 2009.
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