Solzhenitsyn...
(Continued from Page 1)
Solzhenitsyn, and seems to have had little or no contact
with the author. He speaks of the controversy
surrounding Solzhenitsyn in general terms, trying to
describe the psychology of the Russian government.
The reader can mistrust his description when he sees
Grazzini’s prediction (his book was published originally
in 1971) “a Solzhenitsyn in exile is unthinkable.” Hans
Bjorkegren’s biography, on the other hand, is compact
and well-documented. Bjorkegren passes value
judgments only where it is necessary to separate Soviet
propaganda from Solzhenitsyn’s account of the
situation. It is not overburdened with detail, however,
and it makes interesting reading. In writing his version
of Solzhenitsyn’s biography, Leopold Labedz chose the
role of editor. He collected an exhaustive amount of
literature from Soviet journals and from Solzhenitsyn,
adding only brief introductions to this material. The
outstanding documents in this book are the two in
terviews with Solzhenitsyn, which are rare in them
selves, and the author’s Nobel lecture, which appears for
the first lime in connection with other material on
Solzhenitsyn in Labedz’s work. It mav be written
perhaps too tersely, but the value of this book lies in the
amount of authentic material available in this one
source.
On the basis of these biographies and the wealth of
material that has appeared since his exile, Solzhenit
syn's life story from the publication of August 1914 to the
present can be pieced together. In 1969, Solzhenitsyn
was expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union after One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, and
The First Circle had appeared in the West in pirate
editions. He had refused to renounce the use of his works
as anti-Soviet propaganda by people outside the Soviet
Union and he was no longer supported by the govern
ment.
August 1914 appeared in the West in 1971. The author
had been refused publication by seven Soviet publishing
houses, but this was the first manuscript he had sent
directly out of the country. The slander and the
government spying campaigns against Solzhenitsyn
increased. The Soviet authorities said that the sketches
of wealthy landowners contained in the book were ac
tually portraits of Solzhenitsyn’s ancestors. This, they
said, showed that Solzhenitsyn had retained the
capitalistic values of the pre-revolutionary bourgeois
landowners The author denied that the novel was
biographical in a later interview.
Late in 1973, Solzhenitsyn wrote his now famous
letter to the Politburo. When the Soviet government
seized parts three and four of his manuscript, the author
released The Gulag Archipelago to the West, which he
had held back for five years. After refusing to answer
two official summons, Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his
Soviet citizenship in February. His wife and children
have now joined him in exile in Zurich, Switzerland. His
books have been removed from libraries in Russia, but
secret copies of his works are circulating in Russia. The
Russian citizens are risking severe punishment to read
them.
Solzhenitsyn’s writing follows a plan of
chronological criticism. When August 1914 appeared,
Solzhenitsyn said that this novel set in Czarist Russia
was the first of an extenisve, multivolume history of
Russia. The author also said that he was working on a
continuation of the novel in a book called October 1916,
but this has never appeared. The Gulag Archipelago
begins in 1918 and covers the period until immediately
after the death of Stalin. Gulag, as it now appears in the
West, however, is only in two parts, while the author has
written four. It can be hoped that the rest of the book will
soon be published, because the author’s wife was
allowed to bring Solzhenitsyn’s documents with her
when she left Russia. But the rest of Solzhenitsyn’s work
will undoubtedly suffer from his exile, because he
derives much of his historical evidence from personal,
sources. He no longer has access to these individuals
who have survived Soviet repression in the past.
Solzhenitsyn’s life story continues the tale of
repression from the end of the Stalinist era through
Kruschev’s regime-and into Brezhnev’s time. Even
during Kruschev’s de-Stalinization campaign (when the
Premier sponsored the publication of One Day over the
objections of the censors), the author was the subject of
government wiretapping, censorship of his
correspondence and seizures of his manuscripts. It’s
easy to forget the face of Solzhenitsyn when looking at a
picture of Brezhnev smiting at Henry Kissinger.
Solzhenitsyn is a man whom history has isolated in
the awesomely responsible position of critic. His
criticism is teared in the Soviet Union for the profound
influence it could have on the people, influence equal to
that of the Party. Solzhenitsyn recognized this when he
wrote in his Nobel lecture, “One word of truth shall
outweigh the whole world.”
Harriet Johnson
“The Economics of Energy”
Roger L. Miller
William Morrow & Company,
Inc.
New York, 1971
Suppose you’re Richard Nixon.
The whole country is on your
back because of Watergate. You
need something to unite the
citizenry again under your
leadership What do you do?
You create an energy crisis
Then you break its back and
become a hero.
That's Roger L. Miller’s
speculation in The Economics of
Energy. He lays the blame for the
crisis with the federal govern
ment, then wonders if there
wasn’t a deliberate plan behind
government controls and sub
sidies to cause a shortage.
His argument goes like this.
Price controls, in conjunction
with the Arab oil embargo, were
the major cause of the crisis.
When the supply of oil fell off
because of the embargo, the
effect normally would have been
a sharp rise in oil product prices,
accompanied by a reduction in
the quantity demanded.
He insists there would be no
shortage without price controls.
A shortage exists only when
people can’t get enough of a
product even though they’re
"Watership Down”
Richard Adams
Macmillan
Copyright 15174
The heroes of this stunning first novel are a ragtag bunch of wild
rabbits, and Watership Down is the promised land they strike out for
when a visionary member of the comfortable, complacent Sandleford
Warren predicts (correctly) that disaster will overtake the com
munity. Under the uncertain leadership of a half-grown fellow named
Hazel, a few rebellious bucks—the warren’s only believers—consign
hemselves to voluntary exile in the English countryside, where they
engage in various misadventures in attempting to found a new home.
Against astronomical odds, they succeed.
The odds brooked by Mr Adams are also pretty steep, considering
the extraordinary audacity of his book’s conception, but he’s a
remarkable storyteller. How he manages to make the forbidding
material of K M Lockley's The Private Life of the Rabbit, to which
text he expresses indebtedness, into an epic celebration of the beauty
of nature, the qualities of courage, perseverance, and kindness, and
the value of both democracy and rebellion, is too complex and
mysterious a matter to go into at much length here. It helps that
Adams has embellished Lockley’s material with a quantity of rabbit
mythology, folklore, religious stories, legends, and accounts of battle,
all vividly and charmingly depicted, often in fragments of a rabbit
language which he has also contrived.
More than this, Adams characters compel attention as complex,
flesh-and-blood individuals, whether contending with man and their
many natural enemies on the open English moors and fens, or con
triving to escape the stifling conditions of a snoozily complacent or
totalitarian warren. Their human-ness combines with their insider’s
perspective on nature and their detached view of the accomplishments
of man in a way which informs this book with a deep feeling for our
natural surroundings, and with a special concern for the extent to
which that most recalcitrant of animals, man, has despoiled his soul
and his surroundings with his invention. Adams’ perceptions in this
connection are never didactic or hollow-sounding; they’re presented
from the perspective of the rabbits, and the long view of these natural
earth-dwellers puts man’s artificial constructions in a clear, even and
disturbing light.
In the hands of an artist with even a jot less intelligence or in
tegrity, this book could have been a flaccid monstrosity. But Adams
believes in his characters and renders their story in a spare, elegant
style which is utterly free of sentimentality, condescension or
cuteness. Whether he scores points with you may still depend to some
extent on your partiality to the somewhat similar sensibilities of
Tolkien, A.A. Milne, et al, but the imaginative gifts which underlie
Watership Down's conception, and the conviction which marks its
execution, make this book a remarkable achievement.
Chris Houglum
willing to pay the price. If the
price goes high enough, there
won’t be any shortage, because
people won’t be able to afford as
much anyway.
But if prices are controlled, as
they are in Nixon’s anti-inflation
program, the quantity demanded
will exceed the supply. Also,
suppliers will withhold the
product until controls are lifted
and they can get a higher price.
Miller’s solution is to remove
price controls, and to remove all
the special privileges of the oil
industry—the oil import quotas,
the subsidies for exploration, the
oil depletion allowance and other
tax breaks.
This would restore competition
to the industry, Miller says. It
would also cause the price of
petroleum products to go way up.
But, Miller insists, if the industry
were competitive, the outrageous
oil company profits couldn’t be
made, and they would find the
most efficient ways to meet
public energy demands.
Miller’s conclusions don’t
answer one concern, though:
Maybe the oil companies can
function as a monopoly even
without the government’s help.
Even if oil executives aren’t
given positions in fuel allocation
agencies, will the problem be
solved if they can still join
together under one massive
corporation to get the oil out of
Alaska? Miller distrusts the
government more than the oil
companies, but isn’t government
regulation necessary to prevent
monopoly power? He doesn’t say.
*
Peter Wilson
“They Could Not Trust the King’’
Stanley Tretick, William V. Shannon
Collier Books
Copyright 1974
In the upper left comer of the back cover, the book is classified as
a "History.” Well it is and it isn’t. There is a connotation in that word
of objectivity and clean hindsight. Don’t expect this book to be ob
jective. Of course there is a long tradition of biased History books, like
the ones you pored over in your formative years, and They Could Not
Trust the King never begins to approach the open falsity of some of
those.
The text for this book was completed on Nov. 30, 1973, at which
point the Senate Committee investigation had closed, yet Cox had only
just been fired and Watergate as an event in history was still loudly
and fiercely evolving. So this is hindsight from the middle of things,
like a sportswriter releasing his article after just the first half. It is,
then, a History in focus if not in encompasing wholeness. And a damn
good book.
What makes William Shannon’s text so valuable is that it can
almost be seen as a “Watergate Handbook.” It is a fascinating
program to the drama. For each player there is interest-grabbing
background material: first and foremost a revealing and chilling
picture of Nixon on the way up — the things he said, the creeds he
followed, the single-minded path he walked. Then profiles, often
surprising, of each member of the committee and each witness. This
is the heart of the book’s appeal.
If Shannon’s words are the story and signature of the men, then
Stanley Tretick’s 102 photographs are the essence. Images beyond the
faces, into the eyes, into the minds. Moments of fright and sorrow,
hope and evil that passed before the TV’s moving eye too quickly to
live long. But they live in this book, and are insights of great depth.
The design and layout was done by Allen Hurlburt, and the book is
beautifully put together.
They Could Not Trust the King is a valuable record of things that
too soon will have slipped into the far past. It is also a compelling
picture book to leave in the living room. Look at it, read it, keep it. It’s
a good book. Todd SchwartI
'(Continued from Page 2)
News (albeit on a more local level), among others? Perhaps it is true,
as the authors mention too rarely in their book, that journalism was
changing all the time; it mreiy took us until now to give it the old
double-take and see what was actually happening. Because there la no
denying the renewed interest it can generate these days, the energies
it can incite one to expend, and—mo6t important—the urge it can
instill in people to care. Glenn Chang
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