One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Here it was just about bearable.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich must have been far more noteworthy on its release, back in the days when mum was the word on the Siberian Soviet work camps. Having a window into the daily life of these 'zeks'—convicts—must have been enlightening and thought-provoking to those living outside the iron curtain in the 1950s. 

Sadly much of it does not ring very noteworthy or affecting today. Rather than horror, Solzhenitsyn's depiction of the gulag work camps relies on showing the hopeless ennui of the prisoners. Robbed of everything fulfilling in life, the zeks are focused instead of how to get a bit more food, steal a bit more sleep, or avoid the overseers' sticks. I found myself considering this more a fictionalized pamphlet than an actual novella. It was surprising to me that something written on the gulag—a topic which I'm intensely interested in—could be so unaffecting and emotionally unengaging. It shouldn't be that difficult to generate sympathy for wrongly imprisoned human beings, yet that was the case for me. None of the zeks in the story felt human or relatable, despite their circumstances.

I didn't find any of the characters particularly noteworthy, the prose was straightforward, and the events of the story did not affect me, either. So what we have here is mostly a dry, uneventful window into the life of a political prisoner. One which is surprisingly mundane and deadened rather than brutal, humiliating, or torturous. I opened the book expecting (and desiring) to be galvanized against the injustice of the work camps and found myself turning pages in a ho-hum fashion.

Perhaps the translation is partly to blame? I don't speak Russian, so I can't be sure. I picked up the H.T. Willetts translation after hearing it praised, but I found the syntax read rather awkwardly, and the prose, though it had potential, was mostly dry. Whether this is due to Solzhenitsyn's writing style or Willetts' translation, I couldn't say.

I dislike calling media 'boring' because it's always felt like a lazy criticism to me. But, if the tattered footwrap fits...

I haven't yet read Solzhenitsyn's epic journalized-fiction on the gulags, The Gulag Archipelago, but I suspect that style suits Solzhenitsyn far more than this type of fiction does. I wasn't a huge fan of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but I do still look forward to reading Solzhenitsyn's other, more praised work sometime in the near future.

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