Russian novelist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn is dead. Very significant. I don’t know that we have a modern equivalent unless it would be Gore Vidal. But Solzhenitsyn leaving this world is a real deadening event for soviet culture – and for the world.
Jim Murdoch writes about poets and art.
I still have not seen The Dark Knight.
Reginald Shepherd has a very interesting take on MFA programs. He says two things in particular that are the reasons why I’ve never pursued that course for myself. No. 1, I’d have to put myself in debt to attend one (which I just hate to do) unless I went to a program in the state of Texas and took advantage of the state’s veteran’s education benefits program, but I haven’t found a program in Texas that I’d like to attend. I figure if it’s a program that I wouldn’t pay for out of my own pocket then why would I put myself through it on someone else’s dime? Secondly, I’m afraid that going through such a program might kill my love of literature. Not necessarily the MFA, but if I pursued an MFA then I’d likely want to keep going and I’m sure any doctorate program I pursued would sour my love of literature. I just know it would. So I stick to working full time and managing a family while continuing to write. It’s difficult, but I consider it a character-building exercise.
Solzhenitsyn was the first adult novelist I read. I picked ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ because it was short but I was utterly bowled over by its power. About every ten years or so I reread it. It’s a way of gauging how I’ve matured.
Thanks for the link by the way.