FOR THE GOOD OF THE CAUSE

by Alexander Solzhenitayn ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 1964

Apparently Soviet novels can't be published here unless they've caused a commotion there. This one opens with pancake-flat dialogue and maintains the level over several chapters. Its tale: students and educators of a suburban technical school see the new building they've been erecting rudely expropriated by the District Committee, and neither they nor the local ""Liberals"" can do a thing about it. Its implication: little Stalinists, all the bumpy bureaucrats of unfeeling officialdom, are still running things, no matter what the XXII Congress may have said. Its effect (in translation anyway): nil. Surprisingly enough, Solzhenitsyn is the author, but aside from the shrewdly sour' ending and a few glimmers of flesh and blood elsewhere, there's nothing in his sociological blind to suggest the authenticity and anguish he gave to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The translator's foreword salutes the tale's kafkaesque terror, which is where? In its sort of fictionalized Popular Mechanics milieu? Appended are various critical reactions ranging from dogmatist alarms (the Party set) to anti-Stalinist defense of ""critical realism"" (Tvardovsky and the Novy Mir group). Such barometer-readings are always taken by us with reverence, and undoubtedly Good will be adjudged indispensable to an understanding of the new (or continuing) Soviet ""protest"" sensibility. One could do just as well listening to Khrushchev.

Pub Date: June 18, 1964

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: aeger

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1964

Categories: FICTION