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significant Russian writer ...
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http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_10223689
Not the greatest
Article Last Updated: 08/16/2008 09:22:19 AM MDT
While I admire The Tribune's enthusiasm for the great Russian novelist Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, he is not “the greatest author of the 20th century” (“Solzhenitsyn: Century's greatest writer used art to fight repression,” Our View, Aug. 5). This is hyperbole. Yes, Solzhenitsyn is among the 20th century's greatest titans, but there are many others who are more enduring, just as relevant, and possess greater artistic and intellectual powers. A very, very short list might include James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, Andre Malraux, Andre Gide, Albert Camus, Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Mansfield, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Thomas Pynchon. I'm not even certain Solzhenitsyn is the most significant Russian writer. Many would argue for Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Boris Pasternak and, of course, Vladimir Nabokov. I have read Solzhenitsyn in Russian and English, and greatly admire him, but to use the superlative that the editorial writer did is needlessly exaggerated. Gary H. Howard Associate professor of English Salt Lake Community College West Valley City
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