Didn't Read It
A guided tour through the stories that have shaped our culture and the world we live in.
Whether you’re a literature nerd, a romance aficionado, or just Not That Into Books, there’s no denying that the “great works” of literature have played a part in influencing everything from public policy to superhero movies. If you’ve ever wanted to know whether that pretentious guy on Twitter is correct in referring to news stories as “Orwellian,” wondered what stories inspired shows like Bridgerton, or just been curious about why, exactly, your high school English teacher was so insistent about assigning books by Dead White Guys, Didn’t Read It is the podcast for you.
Didn't Read It
Part Two: Solzhenitsyn, the American Right Wing, & Censorship: "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," with Goad Gatsby
Part Two! We're finishing "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and talking about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's life, his time in the United States, and how censorship does and doesn't work today--join us and new pal Goad Gatsby as we finish our march through the steppes.
If you'd like to see more of Goad, you can find him on Bluesky @goad.bsky.social or subscribe to his newsletter at https://goad.ghost.io/
As always, we are:
-Asking with all the love in our hearts that you leave us a review or tell a friend about the show <3
-Accepting friends @didntreadit on Instagram
-Accepting nemesis applications at didntreaditpod@gmail.com
-Thankful to Jess Versus (on Instagram @jessversus) for our incredible logo and assorted works of art
-Thankful to Black Iris Social Club for use of their beautiful space
-Thankful to William Albritton for our incredible theme song, "Books 2.0"
-Thankful to Federico Ferrandina for our closing music, "Russian Walz."
What's your favorite thing about bitcoin? Nothing.
>> Grace Todd:I have no favorite thing, actually. No, I have a favorite thing about bitcoin. It's that dipshits, keep losing all their money.
>> Speaker A:My apes. Books, Bugs, Bugs. Books, books, books.
>> Grace Todd:Hello, and welcome to Didn't Read It. The podcast that is struggling for dignity against all odds.
>> Speaker A:I don't know about you, but my dignity is doing just fine here.
>> Grace Todd:I am your host, Grace Todd, and I am joined again this week by new friend, Goad Gadsby.
>> Speaker A:Hey there. I want to say, since our last episode, I've discovered a J. Sixer got charged. Convicted, of DWI, sentenced to 17 years in prison. So, like I said, J6ers, you're being hunted.
>> Grace Todd:The J6ers, they simply cannot help themselves.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, I'm, being persecuted for getting drunk and driving the wrong way down a road and killing someone.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, God, that's so sad. For the person who died, I mean.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Speaking of persecution, actual persecution, we're picking up where we left off with Alexander Soldier, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Now, unfortunately, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Okay, can you, in brief, give the listeners a quick little recap of what Ivan has been through so far?
>> Speaker A:Well, there's, There's Shoemaker Shukov. Yeah, that's him. Yeah, he has his own trowel.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh.
>> Speaker A:And, he, you know, he likes to do a little mason work. There is, There's the naval captain.
>> Grace Todd:Buinovski.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, that's not a name. He's just trying to get by. He doesn't know how things work. There's Randall Ders.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Speaker A:he likes to snitch.
>> Grace Todd:He sucks. Yeah, he got threatened.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh.
>> Speaker A:There was the Moldovian spy who fell asleep.
>> Grace Todd:Yep.
>> Speaker A:Which is. I don't know, maybe. Maybe he wasn't a spy. Maybe he was just incompetent. And that's why they. Oh, let's see, what else? our boy got, sick, but not sick enough to get him out of work. Yeah, he put a little piece of bread in there, so maybe he gets to come back home for some bread.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, he had a little bread in his mattress. They all got shipped out for work. We met Fetychukov, the sniveler, the leftovers, Liquor.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And Cesar the intellectual.
>> Speaker A:You know, you keep saying licking leftovers, and it's just making me hungry.
>> Grace Todd:And, we finally, you know, we've made it through our day of work and we are marching back to camp. Any. Anything else we want to. You really want to highlight before we dive back in?
>> Speaker A:Oh, yeah. There. You complimented me on knowing the differences between gulags, that sometimes it's just, ah, it's a normal gulag and sometimes it's a super prison.
>> Grace Todd:Yep.
>> Speaker A:And we're obviously having a story about.
>> Grace Todd:The super prison we are in. Yeah. One of the bad gulags.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And any questions before we dive back in?
>> Speaker A:who's the president now? Khrushchev.
>> Grace Todd:Wait, during the. The book, when the book is set. Still Stalin.
>> Speaker A:Still Stalin.
>> Grace Todd:So the book is set during Stalin's reign. It is published, with the blessing of Khrushchev after Stalin dies.
>> Speaker A:Okay. And if you've ever seen the movie the Death of Stalin.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh.
>> Speaker A:Khrushchev is played by, what's, his name, the funny looking guy?
>> Grace Todd:Steve Buscemi. Yes. So just imagine Steve Buscemi reading this book and shedding a single tear and being like, what a masterpiece.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Speaker A:So everybody knows everything there is to know about the first 2/3 of the book.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, exactly. If you have not listened to the first episode, maybe go back and listen to the first episode.
>> Speaker A:No, no, no, no. I think you should, surprise yourself and keep, listening.
>> Grace Todd:Just roll in blind.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. I think you should listen into, in reverse order, part two, then part one. Try something a little different.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, fair enough. All right. So, Ivan Denisovich, they have been marched out of the power plant where they're doing their work, headed back across the steppe. Everyone is moving slowly on purpose because this is one of those little subtle you's that you can give to the guards is refusing to move quickly. They've held you up, so fuck them. But then they see, because they assume that they're all going to be the last, the last squads back to camp. But they come up over like a small rise and they see in the distance a different column, coming back from the machine works. And they're like, oh, shit, we can beat them. And so they all start running like they. Because again, these are. It's all of these little micro grabs for feeling like you have literally any control over your life.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:So, like, if the one thing you can do is try and beat that other squad back to camp so that you can get your dinner before them.
>> Speaker A:Hell yeah.
>> Grace Todd:We find out, incidentally, that the machine works, which the other squad are coming back from is where the knives came from. Because there's been an outbreak of knives in the camp, which is how the Squealers are getting murdered.
>> Speaker A:Oh, man, I hate it when the. There's an outbreak of knives. Did you hear what happened to poor Yuri? Yeah, he came down with a bad case of knife to the throat.
>> Grace Todd:Came down with a bad case of knives. The knives were smuggled back from the machine works inside of the two poles for a volleyball net. Ten long knives in each pole. And now knives would turn up occasionally here and there. Little outbreak of knives, you know, and.
>> Speaker A:The liberals will say that we, need more knife control. No, if everybody had a knife at this prison camp, then we would all be safe.
>> Grace Todd:A knifey society is a polite society. That's what they say. So they're making a run for points out that the main enemy of the Zek is another Zek. You can't resist the urge to someone else over if it gives you that little sense of control.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah. There's a budget here in this prison and they're saving money on punishment by letting the prisoners do all the punishment to other prisoners.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. It says, who's the Zec's main enemy? Another Zek. If only they weren't at odds with one another. Ah, what a difference that would make. But it's not gonna make a difference today. Cause we are on the run.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. Oh, man. Do you know, you know the meme where it's like two guys like, giving each other like, some daps and be like, this is what the establishment fears, but it's just. It's just two prisoners.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, exactly. So they do it, they beat the other column and they get in line to be counted back into the camp. Because again, it's a lot of hurry up and wait and you have to. Everyone has to get counted. And I forgot to mention this earlier, but when we were in the work camp, Shukov found a, like, broken piece of a hacksaw blade, just a little, like a little piece of metal, and instinctively pocketed it. Because on the work site, as we've learned, there's never enough of anything because of all the distraction at the gate. He forgot about it. He forgot it was in his pocket. And now they are on their way into the camp where they are being counted off and frisked, and he suddenly realizes that he has this forbidden little piece of metal on him. He has to make a decision very quickly.
>> Speaker A:You just throw it away.
>> Grace Todd:Well, it says for that strip of hacksaw, he could get 10 days in the cells if they classed it as a knife. But a cobbler's knife, and he's he thinks he can make. He can take this and turn it into something more useful, specifically a knife with which he can, like, work on.
>> Speaker A:Shoes or, or a fork.
>> Grace Todd:Says, but a cobbler's knife was money, it was bread. A pity to throw it away. And so he slips it into one of his mittens.
>> Speaker A:Oh, they'd never check a mitten.
>> Grace Todd:He's in the, he's getting himself ready to be searched. And it says because they were three, he's a number of three men. Because they were three and the guards facing them were five. Shukov could try a ruse. He could choose which of the two guards on the right to present himself to. He decided against a young pink faced one and chose an older man with a gray mustache. The older one, of course, was experienced and could find the blade easily if he wanted to. But because of his age, he would be fed up with the job. It must stink in his nose now, like burning sulfur.
>> Speaker A:That's exactly what I do when I. Well, first of all, I would never steal from a store. but if I were to do that, I would go by the old security guy.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, the older fed up security guy.
>> Speaker A:Again, I would never do a crime.
>> Grace Todd:No, no, no, no. So he goes up and he like very much makes a show of being like, look how compliant I'm being. I've taken my sh. You know, he's like lifting up his jacket and he's got, he's got the two mittens in one hand and he's got the empty mitten in front. Guard reaches up and grabs the first mitten to make sure there's nothing in it, and it says, one such squeeze on the other mitten and he'd be sunk the cells on 9 ounces of bread a day and hot stew. One day out of three, Shukov imagined how weak he'd grow, how difficult he'd find it to get back to his present condition, neither fed nor starving. And an urgent prayer rose in his O Lord, save me. Don't let them send me to the cells. And while all this raced through his mind, the guard, after finishing with the right hand mitten, stretched a hand out to deal with the other. Just then, the guard heard his chief, who was in a hurry to get on, shout to the escort, come on, bring up the machine works column. And instead of examining the other mitten, the old guard waved Shukov on. He was through. So a narrow miss. Yeah, but we got to keep our hacksaw blade.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, maybe make it a fork.
>> Grace Todd:Maybe make it a fork. Because we prayed Maybe, Maybe.
>> Speaker A:Or you were wise and used the old guard.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, the old mitten trick.
>> Speaker A:Ah, me manifesting also me working really hard.
>> Grace Todd:So they've made it back in. The Moldavian is going to be charged with attempted escape and put in the cells. Bummer for the Moldavian, but at least his, his squad appears to have kept him from getting beaten up even worse than he would have been by the guards. And now that they're back in the camp, Shukov is going to do a favor for Cesar. Now, remember we talked about Cesar?
>> Speaker A:Oh, yeah. He's the guy who smokes cigarettes.
>> Grace Todd:He's the guy who smokes cigarettes. He's also the guy who gets the really good parcels.
>> Speaker A:Oh, yeah. He's got. Got that hookup. He's got somebody on the outside sending him letters. He gets more than two letters a year.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. And one of the things about the sort of thriving economy in this camp is that someone like Shukov can do all of these weird little favors for people in order to get a little bit of the things that they have. Right. It's a little society. Right.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. We, live in a society.
>> Grace Todd:They live in a society.
>> Speaker A:Oh, we do not.
>> Grace Todd:I'm sorry, I forgot about we do not. We haven't lived in a society in a little while, I think. And so Shukov, what he can do and what he's going to do is go wait in line on Cesar's behalf in case Cesar's parcel has come, because they know that it's going to come at some point. And because this, again, this is like one of the sort of grinding indignities of this place is that it's just layers and layers of mind numbing bureaucracy that is explicitly designed to make you feel dehumanized. Right. Like, everything just works poorly and stupidly. And so there's this whole thing where, like, to get the parcels, you have to wait in line, and there's always too many people in line. But there's a completely different part of the camp where they actually post who has parcels waiting for them. And so the whole thing is Shukov runs to get in line so that Cesar can go to the other part of camp to find out if he actually has a parcel to wait for. And then he can go where Shukov has been holding his place in line.
>> Speaker A:I would've done it the other way around. Have Cesar wait in line and then have somebody come in and be like, no, gotta get out of line. It's not in yet.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, but Cesar is fancy. So he gets to stroll well, but there's another important thing, another important kind of weird thing about the parcels. So they come in, like, wooden boxes, right?
>> Speaker A:Yeah. And.
>> Grace Todd:And when they arrive at the camp, the guards break the boxes open with axes.
>> Speaker A:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:And then it says, sounds like.
>> Speaker A:That could be bad for what's inside.
>> Grace Todd:it says they took out everything and examined the contents. They cut, they broke, they fingered. They tipped things out from one container into another. If there was anything liquid in glass jars or tins, they opened them and poured it out. Though you had nothing but your hands or a cloth bag to hold it in, they didn't give you the jars. They were scared of something. If there was anything home baked, some tasty sweetmeats or sausage or smoked fish, the guard would take a bite of it himself and just. You try and get high and mighty and complain, and they'll immediately say that this and that are forbidden and won't issue them to you at all. Every Zec who got a parcel had to give and give, starting with the guard who opened it. And when they'd finished their search, they. They didn't give you the stuff in the box it had come in. They just swept everything into your bag or into the skirt of your coat, and off you go. Sometimes they'd whisk you out so fast, you'd be sure to leave something behind. No good going back for it. It, wouldn't be there. And so the other reason Cesar is going to catch up is that he has to go to his bunk and get, like, whatever container he can find.
>> Speaker A:So that, Tupperware party so that.
>> Grace Todd:They can decant his parcel into, like, whatever cotton bag he can get his hands on. And again, it's one of those things that's just so pointless. Like, it's just designed to humiliate you. There's no reason for it.
>> Speaker A:Just let him have his Mason jar of. I don't know what we have. it's Russia. It's vodka.
>> Grace Todd:I don't think they. None of them mention getting alcohol. It's like tea and tobacco. I would guess any liquids would maybe be like, honey. Sugar is at a premium.
>> Speaker A:I think Khrushchev edited that to remove all instances of vodka. He didn't want people knowing that they got a problem there in Russia and that's Their vodka is too good.
>> Grace Todd:That is a problem. But part of the reason that Shukov is willing to wait on Cesar's behalf is that Shukov doesn't get parcels and says he had written to his wife that it was a Waste, don't send them. Don't take the food out of the kids mouths. But though he'd made that decision every time someone in the squad or close by in the barracks received a parcel, his heart ached because there wasn't one for him.
>> Speaker A:No.
>> Grace Todd:And though he'd strictly forbidden his wife to send him anything, even for Easter, and though he never thought of reading the list except for some rich squad member, every now and then he felt himself longing for someone to run up and say, shukov, why don't you go for your parcel? There's one for you. But no one ever ran up.
>> Speaker A:Well, oh, me sowing, me reaping. Oh, this sucks.
>> Grace Todd:Poor Shukov. And it's. I, Part of the reason I wanted to read that passage is because a. Of all. It shows you sort of where Shukov is, right? Like, and. And helps you understand why the things that come into the camp are at such a premium. Someone like Cesar clearly has someone on the outside who has means, who has enough money that they can be sending him these things. It's not cheap. Nothing is cheap. Shukov is not the absolute bottom. And we do find out that there are other people who simply don't get parcels because there's absolutely no way anybody in their lives could afford to send them one. Shukov has made the sort of honorable decision his wife would scrimp and save to send him parcels, but it's not worth it. It's taking money out of the mouths of his children, but he can't help yearning for it. And I just find that very like.
>> Speaker A:Denzel Washington in the Hurricane.
>> Grace Todd:I have not seen that movie.
>> Speaker A:No. he goes to jail for a crime he didn't do, like in the Bob Dylan song.
>> Grace Todd:Ah.
>> Speaker A:and, there's a scene where his wife is like, visiting him and he's like, you have to stop visiting me. You have to bury me. I'm already dead.
>> Grace Todd:That's, you know, put a pin in that because we have. There's an interesting parallel there with Solzhenitsyn himself.
>> Speaker A:I'm glad we get to have a little parallel between the hurricane and, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Yes. That's not a name.
>> Grace Todd:So it's. I don't know. I just. That passage, I think, out of this book almost got me the most. Like the image of a man turning down even small comforts from outside of the gulag because it is the right thing to do and not being able, despite it all, to fight the little flame of hope in his chest that Someday one would appear anyway.
>> Speaker A:But he also has to have his dignity.
>> Grace Todd:He has to have his dignity.
>> Speaker A:But the price of having your dignity is knowing the things that you're missing out on.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. So there is a package for Cesar, and, Cesar comes to get his place in line, and he runs into another, a fellow intellectual who has somehow gotten a copy of a, like, intellectual newspaper. And Cesar and this other man says when they see each other, they bloom like a couple of poppies. And Shukov, thinks to himself, those Muscovites can smell one another at a distance. Like dogs. They sniff and sniff when they meet in the way of their own. They talk so fast too, Each trying to out talk the other. When they're jabbering away like that, you hear practically no Russian. They might be talking Latvian or Romanian. So Zhukov's throwing a little. A little, intra Russian shade on these puffed up intellectual Muscovites. But, the puffed up intellectual Muscovites are good for something because Cesar just got a bunch of good shit.
>> Speaker A:I've never heard that word before. Muscovite.
>> Grace Todd:Someone from Moscow.
>> Speaker A:Oh, okay. I was thinking more like somebody who's like, really into Elon Musk.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, we could start calling them that.
>> Speaker A:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:People who live in Moscow might get a little upset, but that'd be pretty funny.
>> Speaker A:You know, I'm starting to think that they might kind of like him.
>> Grace Todd:That's fair.
>> Speaker A:We'll see. Let's put a pin on that.
>> Grace Todd:Well, your average Muscovite probably, you know.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, maybe. Maybe your, average oligarch.
>> Grace Todd:That's fair. I don't know how many oligarchs there are in Moscow.
>> Speaker A:I, think of all the oligarchs, they would be in Moscow.
>> Grace Todd:Do they? Well, is Moscow still like the, you know, maybe the oligarchs have. Have a different city they live in now.
>> Speaker A:Where in Russia?
>> Grace Todd:I do not know. I don't know anything. I know very little. I learned some doing the research for this book.
>> Speaker A:My understanding of people who've been to Russia were like, yeah, Moscow is great, but when you leave the city it's not.
>> Grace Todd:So it's still basically just Moscow. Yeah. Fair.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. No, I've never been there in terms.
>> Grace Todd:Of, like, where the rich people would be hanging out, I mean. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Shukov's, gambit of sorts pays off immediately because Cesar says that Shukov can have his dinner. So that's nice. And he runs off to the mess hall. Very exciting.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, I'm riveted.
>> Grace Todd:It's Dinner. Yeah, it's finally dinner. and the mess hall is being blockaded by another one of those sort of despised prisoners who got a little bit of power.
>> Speaker A:Who is it?
>> Grace Todd:and have run amok with it. And they call him the Limper.
>> Speaker A:The Limper?
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Speaker A:That's not a name, that's a verb.
>> Grace Todd:Says because of his lameness, he'd managed to get classed as disabled. But he was a hefty son of a bitch. He'd got himself a birch club and standing on the porch, would hit anyone who came up the steps without his say so. No, not anyone. He was smart and could tell even in the dark, when it was better to let a man alone. Anyone who might give as good as he got. He only hit the down and outs once he hit Shukov. So we've got another petty tyrant. And I do not think it's an accident that this book is littered with petty tyrants. Right. Like Solzhenitsyn has something to say on this count about the sort of inherent qualities of most men who are given a little bit of power in a desperate situation and the way that it will affect them. Right. There are more. There are more petty tyrants than there are men like Tyran, the squad leader.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It seems like it's a country that only produces these types of people.
>> Grace Todd:Well, I mean, I think it's the situation as much as anything. I mean. And we will talk more about Solzhenitsyn and what he thinks of sort of the. The state of mankind writ large. But the generous reading and I think the more supported reading is that this, at a minimum, is what happens to men in duress like this. Very few of them turn out like Shukov and Turin. Very few of them focus mainly on their own survival and their own dignity and go out of their way to do right by others and essentially take care of themselves and each other. You have more petty tyrants like Der Randall and the Limper, and you have snivelers like Fetychukov. You see what I'm saying?
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm just saying these conditions produce these types of men.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, I think that's what. I think that is mostly what. Well, I think that is what Solzhenitsyn is saying in the moment when he writes this book. And I actually think that his attitude towards this and towards mankind writ large evolves over the course of his life. And he is one of those people who becomes more conservative as he ages for various reasons. And we will talk about that later.
>> Speaker A:That's what they always said to me, you'll be more conservative when you get older. And then I say, no, you grew up when Ronald Reagan was the president and you decided you liked that shit.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. You were probably pretty conservative to begin with. And to be clear, Solzhenitsyn is not what we would in the west consider anything like a liberal, like, by any means.
>> Speaker A:I mean, yeah. Didn't you say, like, he was a part of the revolution? No, not the revolution. The, He was a party man.
>> Grace Todd:He was. When he went into the.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Gulag.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. Look, I'm just saying. Yeah, not a liberal. He was a party man.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, he was.
>> Speaker A:What's that called when you're not a liberal? Oh, yeah. Communists F Cking.
>> Grace Todd:No.
>> Speaker A:But yeah, he's gotten harder and been like, I don't know, maybe this communism thing isn't really working out.
>> Grace Todd:Maybe this is bad, actually. So there's a lot. There's a drawn out scene because this man is again, exercising what little power he has in like, the dumbest way possible. And there's this sort of like, tide of men and they're all just trying to get into their dinner and he's like, physically, like, bowling them over, but the men behind them are pushing forward too hard for them to go back much. And it's. It is another one of these points in the novel where you can see how finely balanced the power is between the people in charge and the much larger group of people that they're oppressing and how hard they work to keep that from tipping. Right.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:M. But finally, after some back and forth and after some people getting hit with things, shukov and the 104th managed to make it into the mess hall.
>> Speaker A:All right, take that, limper. What do you get out of hitting me with that stick?
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, it's, Everyone hates limper.
>> Speaker A:Hey, limper. No, limping.
>> Grace Todd:And of course, Shukov is thrilled because he's getting two dinners.
>> Speaker A:Ooh, that's right. Yeah, he set things up.
>> Grace Todd:and again we run through, like, there's a stupid bureaucracy to getting your food. There was a stupid bureaucracy to getting lunch too. It's this whole thing. You have to, like, fight for your bowls and then you get the bowls and then they count them out and it's a whole thing. And now you have to fight for your trays and you can't get the food without a tray and there's not enough trays to actually go around. And so you're having to, like, hover over people and like, snipe. Trays out of their hands. And this is the one time we see Shukov really, be kind of a dick. And not, I mean, not even really a dick, but basically he yanks a tray out from sort of under somebody's nose and it was supposed to be somebody else's. And Shukov just pushes him over like you, I have a tray. And so they get the food and it says, they sit, you know, they, they sit down, the whole squad gets their food. And it says now. They had nothing more to say to one another. The sacred moments had come. Shukov complained about nothing. Neither about the length of his stretch, nor about the length of the day, nor about their swiping. Another Sunday. This was all he thought about. Now we'll stick it out. We'll survive, God willing, till it's over.
>> Speaker A:I, told you there'd be a happy ending at the end. He gets two soups.
>> Grace Todd:He gets two soups and it's very exciting.
>> Speaker A:See, you doubted me when I said there'd be a happy ending.
>> Grace Todd:And there is like a long, lingering description of this soup. There's one potato in it. Thrilling. Not much fish, but it says like.
>> Speaker A:A slice of potato or like a.
>> Grace Todd:Whole potato, A medium sized spud, Frost bitten, hard and sweetish. Sweet. Ish.
>> Speaker A:Oh, okay.
>> Grace Todd:Not sweetish.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the fish.
>> Grace Todd:It says there wasn't much fish, just a few stray bits of bare backbone. But you must chew every bone, every fin to suck the juice out of them, for the juice is healthy. It takes time, of course, but he was in no hurry to go anywhere. Today was a red letter day for him. Two helpings for dinner, two helpings for supper. Everything else could wait. We're having a great time.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, everybody's winning.
>> Grace Todd:Everything is fine. But he reminds himself that he needs to, like, try and make this last because he's gotten more bread too, right? And you gotta, we gotta save the bread for later because the belly is a demon. It doesn't remember how well you treated it yesterday. It'll cry out for more tomorrow.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, that's how I feel. Every time I have to go and get groceries, I've been like, ugh, again. you make me pay for this all over. Oh, yeah, what can you do about it?
>> Grace Todd:What can you do? And then we have a very interesting encounter of sorts that I still am not entirely sure what to make of it. Because he's sitting there, you m know, he's still working on his. His portions, and an old man sits down across from him, U81. Because they all have their prisoner numbers.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And Shukov doesn't seem to know his name. And this old man was in the group that got sent to do the barbed wire in the, in the snow.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And it says he'd been told this old man had spent years without number in camps and prisons and that he hadn't benefited from a single amnesty. Whenever one 10 year stretch had run out, they shoved another onto him right away. The old man held himself straight. The other zechs sat all hunched up and looked as if he'd put something extra on the bench to sit on. There was nothing left to crop on his head. His hair had dropped out long since. His eyes didn't dart. After everything going on in the mess hall, he kept them fixed in an unseeing gaze at some spot over Shukov's head. His worn wooden spoon dipped rhythmically into the thin stew. But instead of lowering his head to the bowl like everybody else, he raised the spoon high to his lips. He'd lost all his teeth. All life had drained out of his face, but it had been left not sickly or feeble, but hard and dark like carved stone. And by his hands, big and cracked and blackened, you could see that he'd had little opportunity of doing soft jobs. But he wasn't going to give in. Oh, no. He wasn't going to put his nine ounces on the dirty bespattered table. He'd put it on a well washed bit of rag.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, he's keeping his dignity, even though he's just a decaying blob of flesh.
>> Grace Todd:And he's gonna die there.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And we get this portrait and we never see him again. This is the only thing we see of him. It's just this quick but very sort of detailed portrait of this old man who is dying in, this gulag, but as you said, is keeping his dignity. He's got his little. He doesn't put his bread on the bare table like everyone else does. He has a little piece of fabric that he puts it on.
>> Speaker A:Oh, I bet if he's been in there for that long, I bet he was a Romanov.
>> Grace Todd:Maybe.
>> Speaker A:he's probably still got like, Faberge eggs, like, hidden in his crevices.
>> Grace Todd:Well, and one of the things that's so interesting is we don't find out. We don't get any backstory.
>> Speaker A:We don't get a name. I gave you the backstory here.
>> Grace Todd:All we know is that every time his sentence runs out, they give him another One.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. They don't want, a Romanov running free. Maybe not a Romanoff, but, you know, like, maybe like Shmuromanoff, one of the.
>> Grace Todd:Former persons, as they called them.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. Like, you know too much. We don't want to kill you, but we don't want you to live.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, I wouldn't be so, you know, maybe. Maybe that's what he's meant to be, is a minor portrait of a former noble. So Shukov finishes dinner. He runs off to buy some tobacco. We find out that he has, like, a teeny tiny bit of money that he has earned because he makes, slippers and patches jackets.
>> Speaker A:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:He's very enterprising, our Shukov buys his tobacco. And while he's buying his tobacco, from a man. From a man they just call the Let L E T T. Everyone is. A lot of these people are nicknamed based on which part of the Soviet Union they're from. There are two Estonians, which I have not really dwelled on because they're not terribly important, except that they're portrayed as just being, like, fairly decent people. And there's this one line where Shukov is just like, Estonians were pretty all right by him, just like we like Estonians, which apparently won Solzhenitsyn a fair amount of loyalty from Estonians writ large.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Good dudes.
>> Speaker A:That's why whenever I write a book, I always leave a chapter about how great the Estonians are, because then I know my book will do well in Estonia.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, well. And maybe people should be nicer to the Estonians.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, I think we should be nicer to more countries that we don't know too much about.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Estonia is a small and vibrant nation.
>> Speaker A:just like, Tanzania and, Anadora.
>> Grace Todd:Sure.
>> Speaker A:And, San Marino.
>> Grace Todd:Exactly. Yes. But as we are buying our tobacco, the other prisoners in this. He's in another man's sort of like, bunk. And the other prisoners are arguing, and someone shouts, do you mean to say you think Old Whiskers will take pity on you? Why? He wouldn't trust his own brother? You haven't a chance, you ass. And Old Whiskers is Stalin all right because of mustache. Uh-huh.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And it says one good thing about these special camps. You were free to let off steam at Ust Izhma, which is the last camp, Shukov was in, which was not for political prisoners.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:at Ust Ishma, you need only whisper that there was a shortage of matches outside and they'd put you in the guardhouse. And add another 10 years to your stretch. But here, you could yell out anything you liked from the top row of bunks. The squealers didn't pass it on, and the security boys had stopped caring.
>> Speaker A:What are you gonna do, throw me in a gulag?
>> Grace Todd:Well, and that's. That's interesting because to be. You know, there is no mitigating the fact that this is horrific. But it does point out that even on their own terms, this is not a good system. Because what they've done is they've put all the political dissidents together, and they're just spending all of their time chatting and debating and talking politics.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. you think you hate Stalin? Here's why I hate him.
>> Grace Todd:Like, maybe not most, but some of these men will eventually be released.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And granted, a lot of them will be exiled, but it doesn't.
>> Speaker A:Where. Where are they gonna exile them to Moldovia?
>> Grace Todd:well, when Solzhenitsyn was lit out, he was exiled to Kazakhstan.
>> Speaker A:Oh, okay.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, he was a free man, quote unquote. But he was not allowed to return to actual Russia. He, just wasn't in a gulag anymore.
>> Speaker A:Oh, okay.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, the sort of conclusion of this is much like the building site. Like, even on their own terms, these things don't make sense. Right? Like, they. They're. They're not do. They're not accomplishing anything.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, they barely built a wall.
>> Grace Todd:Exactly.
>> Speaker A:They need four more of the. They need three more walls.
>> Grace Todd:They got a lot more walls to build. So he gets his tobacco, and gets back to his bunk, and Cesar is there with the bounty of his little package from the outside. And again, this sort of camp etiquette. Shukov arrives and gets into his bunk, and he knows that per the etiquette of the camp, he is owed some of what Cesar has gotten. Right. That's why you do these little favors. But he is not going to debase himself by being like, well, you got it. What's for me? And it says the right was his. That he knew. But even eight years as a convict hadn't turned him into a jackal. And the longer he spent at the camp, the stronger he made himself. But his eyes were another matter. Those eyes. The hawk like eyes of a zek darted to one side and slid swiftly over what was laid out there. And although the food hadn't been unpacked and some of the bags were still unopened, that quick look and the evidence of his nose told him that Caesar had got sausage, condensed Milk, a plump smoked fish, salt pork, crackers, biscuits, four pounds of lump sugar and what looked like butter, as well as cigarettes and pipe tobacco.
>> Speaker A:jackpot. And an egg.
>> Grace Todd:And an egg. Yes. More valuable than gold. And, we get a little bit more of the economics of these packages. And Shukov is sort of thinking about and therefore telling us that it's the. The packages themselves are kind of easy come, easy go, because the number of favors that you sort of have to, like, ask for and the things that you are promising to people in between packages, by the time you get a package, you might have spent it all, essentially.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Like you owe people all of these little things. and so Cesar is enjoying his bounty, and he's sharing it with, poor Buinovski, who, if you remember from episode one, got in trouble leaving the camp this morning. No, he was. They were. They were searching everyone at the gates, leaving the camp in the morning, and Buinovski, because again, he is the naval.
>> Speaker A:Ah, yeah. He was like, that's against the rules. And they're like, ha, ha ha. Rules don't exist.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, exactly. And Buinovsky has. Is sharing in Cesar's bounty when the guards come in and collect him and take him away to put him in the cells. And, it says. The captain sighed, nothing more. It must have been easier for him to take out a squadron of destroyers into the dark, stormy night than to tear himself away from this friendly chat and set out for the icy cells. And they all sort of watch him go. And because he was hoping that he wouldn't get put in the cells, he hasn't prepared himself. And Shukov is watching this, huh? They're all watching this happen. And they're like, he didn't. If he had been thinking, he would have been able to, like, hide things in his clothes. And so Cesar palms him a couple of cigarettes on the way out for him to, like, hide so that he can at least smoke when he's in the cells.
>> Speaker A:Or barter.
>> Grace Todd:Or barter. Well, it's solitary confinement.
>> Speaker A:You can barter with no one.
>> Grace Todd:Barter with yourself.
>> Speaker A:How's he gonna smoke those? Do you have some matches?
>> Grace Todd:Unclear, actually.
>> Speaker A:All right, we'll get to that.
>> Grace Todd:It's wild to remember that there was a time when tobacco was, it seems, considered more of a human right than food. Half the time it's like they might have to provide their own tobacco, but as you're saying, it seems like they can figure out how to light it anyway. At the same time, fetychukov returns to the barracks crying with a bloody nose because he was licking someone's leftover skin.
>> Speaker A:Oh, always, licking those leftovers. Those sweet, delicious leftovers.
>> Grace Todd:So he'd been beaten up again over the bowls. When you thought about it, you couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He wouldn't live to see the end of his stretch. His attitude was all wrong. So Fetychukov is doomed, and Buinovsky is maybe doomed. As he leaves, we are told that the squad is kind of like, best of luck, like, keep your chin up. And it says, but what could you really say to him? They knew the cells. The hundred and fourth did. They'd built them. Brick walls, cement floor, no windows. A stove they'd lit only to melt the ice on the walls and make pools on the floor. You slept on bare boards. And if you'd any teeth left to eat with after all the chattering they'd be doing. They gave you nine ounces of bread day after day, and hot stew only on the 3rd, 6th and 9th. 10 days. 10 days hard in the cells. If you sat them out to the end, your health would be ruined for the rest of your life. TB and nothing but hospital for you till you kicked the bucket. And for Those who got 15 days and sat them out, they went straight into a hole in the cold earth. And so this is Solzhenitsyn reminding us that Shukov has learned how to survive in this place. But the stakes are very, very high. One misstep and you are f ked. You are not going to make it out alive. And they don't really care if you make it out alive. They nominally sort of care about keeping you alive so that you can keep working. But you're replaceable.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, there's always more political prisoners.
>> Grace Todd:And we're coming up on the very end of this story. Do you have any, my hot takes on this any before we. Before we draw to the very, very end of Ivan Denisovich's day?
>> Speaker A:I like how you had to look at the COVID of that book.
>> Grace Todd:I don't know why I keep having to double check the names.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, it's because they're not easy to remember names.
>> Grace Todd:It's true.
>> Speaker A:yeah, as I said, it's gonna be a happy ending. You know, this has been the third act of the story where, you know, you got two bowls of soup worked, your way past, the limper got that special package.
>> Grace Todd:Mm. We've gotten kind of a catalog of all of the missteps that you can make in gulag life and how they will you over.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, TB, or 15 days in the hole means you just end up in a colder hole in the middle of the earth.
>> Grace Todd:Yep.
>> Speaker A:Whatever. It means dead. I get it.
>> Grace Todd:and we're about to learn the sort of the final potential misstep of gulag life that we are shown, which is so poor Buinovsky has taken off, and it's time for the evening count. Right? They get counted one last time because this entire. Their entire lives are just stumbling from one count to another.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. Always counting shout out, taliyah.
>> Grace Todd:but Cesar is not thinking clearly. And it says that he's, like, he's a little bit drunk on his bounty, and all of a sudden, it's time for the count, and he's got all of his stuff just, like, spread out on his bed.
>> Speaker A:All right?
>> Grace Todd:And this is a problem. It says, for all his high opinion of himself, Cesar didn't know a thing about life. After collecting his parcel, he shouldn't have gloated over it. He should have taken it to the storeroom right away, before evening count eating is something that can wait. But now, what was Cesar going to do with all that stuff? He couldn't carry his sack with them to the Count, but to leave it in the barracks, no matter how briefly, meant that the first to run back from the count would steal it. So he's panicked. He's good. He's. Yeah, yeah. Like what? Oh, shit.
>> Speaker A:Oopsie doodles.
>> Grace Todd:And Shukov. And again, like, here's what I would do, all right?
>> Speaker A:Put all the bad stuff on the top and then, like, hide the good stuff under. Under the mattress.
>> Grace Todd:Mm.
>> Speaker A:So that way they just steal all the stuff you don't want. They'd be doing you a favor.
>> Grace Todd:There we go. I. So I realized that the scale of all of these interactions are, like, very. Is, like, very small, right? Like, these are all, like, very little interactions, and the stakes are simultaneously, like, very high and very low. But Shukov, once again, is. Goes out of his way to be kind, even though he doesn't really have to. And granted, he will get something for it, probably. But Shukov takes pity on him and says. And tells him, basically, like, stand here and, like, let everyone else go out first. Be the last person to leave. I'm gonna run ahead, and I will make sure that I'm one of the first people counted, and then I will run back in here and protect your stuff for you, which is exactly what he does. And we. We go through the evening Count. And it's f. Cking cold, and everyone's miserable, and everyone is. It says the. You know, they're yelling at them, and the men are refusing to move because them. It says that the men didn't budge. Them, And as soon as everyone is. As soon as each man is counted, they bolt for their barracks where it's warm. And it says all. You know, because it says they're all square today with the authorities. All square unless there's a recount. Those parasites were such morons, they counted worse than any herdsman. For all that he may be unable to read or write. A herdsman knows if there's a calf missing when he's driving the herd. And these parasites had been trained, whatever good it had done them. So they're too stupid to count, Right?
>> Speaker A:Yeah, I've been there before.
>> Grace Todd:And Shukov does manage to get himself counted. First he runs back, he keeps Cesar's stuff safe, and, stop the count. There is a recount, too. That's the worst part. But before the recount, we get kind of the last important interaction that Ivan Denisovich has. And it's the man in the bunk next to him. Aloshka is a Baptist, and the Baptists were a persecuted minority in Soviet Russia. They were locked up for being Baptists.
>> Speaker A:I think America should learn from this.
>> Grace Todd:And they have a really interesting. So Shukov gets back in his bunk. He gets himself all situated for sleep. He's got his feet back in his jacket sleeve. Remember, there's a whole, like, layering system he's got.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. So his teeth don't shatter if he's lucky.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh. And he mumbles a little prayer to himself. He says, glory be to thee, oh, Lord, another day over. Thank you. I'm not spending tonight in the cells here. It's still bearable. And Aloshka, who is next to him, hears him mumbling to himself, and he says, ivan Denisovich, your soul is begging to pray. Why don't you give it its freedom? And Shukov looks at him and says, well, it's this way. Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don't get through, or they're returned with rejected scrawled across them.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:It says, outside the staff quarters were four sealed boxes. They were cleared by a security officer once a month. Many appeals were dropped in them. The writer waited, counting the weeks. There will be a reply in two months, in one month. But the reply doesn't come. Or if it does, so it's only rejected and his Baptist friend is trying to explain to him, you know, your prayers stay unanswered because you don't have enough faith.
>> Speaker A:Yep. Gotta put more points in your faith, in the system.
>> Grace Todd:You must never stop praying if you have real faith. You tell a mountain to move, and it will move. And Shukov says, don't talk nonsense. I've never seen a mountain move. Well, to tell the truth, I've never seen a mountain at all. But you now, you prayed in the Caucasus, with all that Baptist society of yours, did you make a single mountain move?
>> Speaker A:you know what? I think we got an atheist here.
>> Grace Todd:Well, he's not an atheist, because he does pray, but he finds the Baptists very confusing.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, m. Me too.
>> Grace Todd:We find out that, the Baptists, who, according to Shukov, hadn't hurt anyone, have all been given 25 years in the gulags.
>> Speaker A:I think that's pretty soft.
>> Grace Todd:And Aloshka keeps sort of lecturing him on what he is supposed to pray for.
>> Speaker A:By the way, what did the Catholics get? Was it more severe?
>> Grace Todd:I don't know.
>> Speaker A:It's gotta be.
>> Grace Todd:I have no clue. I don't know if the Catholics would be considered more acceptable because they're technically closer to the Russian Orthodox Church or not. I mean, they're definitely closer to the Russian Orthodox Church than Protestants are, right?
>> Speaker A:Yeah, I guess so. Look, these are my unanswered questions.
>> Grace Todd:And Aloshka says, ivan Denisovich, you shouldn't pray to get parcels or for extra stew. Not for that. Things that a man puts high price on are vile in the eyes of our Lord. We must pray about things of the spirit. That the Lord Jesus should remove the scum of anger from our hearts. And Shukov cuts him off and says, now, you listen to me.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, you listen here.
>> Grace Todd:He says, in our parish, there isn't a man richer than the priest. Take roofing, for instance. We charge 35 rubles a day to ordinary people for mending a roof. But the priest, a hundred, and he forks up without a whimper. He pays alimony to three women in three different towns, and he's living with a fourth.
>> Speaker A:What a guy.
>> Grace Todd:And he keeps that bishop of his on a hook, I can tell you. Oh, yes, he gives his fat hand to the bishop, all right, and he's thrown out. Every other priest they've sent there wouldn't share a thing with them. And the poor Baptist pushes back and is like, why are you talking to me about priests? The Orthodox Church has departed from scripture. It's because their faith is unstable. that they're not in prison. And the problem with the Baptists is that they would not play ball with politics the way that the Russian Orthodox Church was willing to when it kept them out of prison.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. Doesn't it suck when that happens? Unlike here in America where the Baptists are willing to play ball?
>> Grace Todd:Yes, yes they are. And what's interesting is like Aloshka is portrayed through the novel as being one of the happiest men in the gulag. He has made his peace with his situation and his faith is very important to him. And he has a hand copied notebook that's got like the first half of the New Testament in it.
>> Speaker A:That's not even the Good Testament.
>> Grace Todd:And he like reads it carefully at night. And his sort of last word on the matter to Shukov is, why do you want freedom? In freedom, your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds. You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul. As the apostle Paul wrote. Why all these tears? Why are you trying to weaken my resolution? For my part, I am ready not merely to be bound, but even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. Sounds like he's got a bad religion.
>> Grace Todd:He's. Well, he's happy with it.
>> Speaker A:Hey man, can I get you a whip so you can self flagellate?
>> Grace Todd:But I think Solzhenitsyn is intending for us to be a little bit in awe of this man who is so happy in the Gulag, who is so reconciled to his own fate. And I think it's important for you and I to remember that we Americans living in the world that has been disassembled by the evangelical right, do not have the same impression of Baptists that readers in 1950 something or 1964 in Russia would have had.
>> Speaker A:All right, maybe you're making it sound like he's more like Ned Flanders.
>> Grace Todd:I think he's meant to be Ned Flanders. Yeah, yeah.
>> Speaker A:Like, oh boy, I get to be in prison. That means I get to really test my faith. Thank you, Lord.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. And that it's a source of, it's a source of strength for him that Shukov finds mystifying. You know what I mean?
>> Speaker A:Also with the American right, religious right, they would be excited about being sent to jail for their religious belief.
>> Grace Todd:Would they though?
>> Speaker A:Yes, they would love it. I mean, they hate being in jail, but they would just be like, hell, yeah, I'm in prison. I'm so persecuted.
>> Grace Todd:I feel like one of the things about the current rite is that they love to imagine themselves to be persecuted, but when they experience a single consequence, they turn into screaming babies.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. As opposed to, like, even when they're not being persecuted, they turn into screaming babies.
>> Grace Todd:They turn into screamier babies. Yeah, yeah. And so shout out to all the.
>> Speaker A:J6ers who got, completely pardoned and are going to slowly work their way back into the prison system.
>> Grace Todd:Love you guys. So there's a recount.
>> Speaker A:Yep. Stop the count.
>> Grace Todd:There's a recount. Ah. Shukov hides Cesar's food once again. And they get through the recount. so he gets back into his bunk. He gets himself all cozy. Cesar comes back, Shukov returns his food to him, and Alushka the Baptist comes back. And Shukov says that he's impractical. That's his trouble. Makes himself nice to everyone, but doesn't know how to do favors that get paid back. And so Shukav gives him, Aloshka the Baptist, one of the biscuits that Cesar has given him out of his special little stash of food. And Aloshka smiled. Thank you, but you've got nothing yourself. And Shukov says, eat it. We've got nothing, but we always find a way to make something extra. And so Shukov has his. His slice of sausage from Cesar and, saves the rest for the morning and says. And he buried his head in the thin, unwashed blanket, deaf now to the crowd of zechs from the other half as they jostled between the bunk frames, waiting to be counted. Shukov went to sleep fully content. He'd had many strokes of luck that day. They hadn't put him in the cells. They hadn't sent his squad to the settlement. He'd swiped a bowl of kasha at dinner. The squad leader had fixed the rates well. He'd built a wall and enjoyed doing it. He'd smuggled that bit of hacksaw blade through. And he'd earned a favor from Cesar that evening. He'd bought that tobacco. And he hadn't fallen ill. He'd got over it. A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day. There were 3,000, 653 days like that in his stretch from the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. 3653 days. The three extra days were for leap years.
>> Speaker A:Ah. That's how they get you.
>> Grace Todd:The end.
>> Speaker A:It just ends. Reminding us about leap. Leap years.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. That was a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich.
>> Speaker A:What a time. What a time, indeed. You know, I've learned a very valuable lesson, and that's don't be a good, honest person that questions authority, and I won't get locked up in the Gulag.
>> Grace Todd:I don't think that's the lesson.
>> Speaker A:Oh. What do you think the lesson is?
>> Grace Todd:I don't know what the lesson is. And I think that that is one of the things I like about this novel.
>> Speaker A:what I like about that novel that you just pretty much read and explained to me is that, it's crushing. It's brutal. aside from two soups, there's nothing good happening in it. And it teaches us, that things are unfair and people are mean to you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Oh, except maybe when it's Randall, you can be like, listen up here, bub.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, you can scare the shit out of Randall. But that was. But that was a good day. That was a great day for Ivan Denisovich.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, it was so great. He wrote it down.
>> Grace Todd:He went to just. Can you imagine a life where you're like this? This is a red letter day.
>> Speaker A:We're gonna put this one up in the rafters.
>> Grace Todd:So before I sort of bounce onto Solzhenitsyn himself and the overarching story of him and this novel, do you have any questions in particular?
>> Speaker A:how tall was he?
>> Grace Todd:The fictional character or the author?
>> Speaker A:You mean that's not based off of a real person?
>> Grace Todd:No.
>> Speaker A:Oh. Well, how tall was he?
>> Grace Todd:I don't know.
>> Speaker A:Web search height.
>> Grace Todd:Are you looking up Solzhenitsyn's height?
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Why?
>> Speaker A:I, just want to know, was he a tall man? Was he a short man? but you know what? There's a lot of websites that have people's height and, weight for, like, not even sports players, just everybody. but no, they don't have one for him.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, that's a bummer.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:I think it says somewhere in the novel that, Ivan is fairly tall.
>> Speaker A:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Speaker A:Well, here's what he looks like.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, that is Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. He's got an Amish beard, receding, hairline. Oh, this is a picture from 74. So that I guess when he would get out of, out of prison.
>> Grace Todd:So he was released from the Gulag in. He was released from the Gulag in 1953 and exiled to Kazakhstan. By the time the novel was published in 62, he was living back in Russia. His sentence had basically been expunged, and he was allowed to return to Russia proper.
>> Speaker A:he's got two wives, one named Natalie, the other one named. Oh, I'm sorry. Natalia. The other one also named Natalia.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh.
>> Speaker A:He married the same Natalia twice.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Speaker A:what a man.
>> Grace Todd:So back on.
>> Speaker A:Back on.
>> Grace Todd:Back on task.
>> Speaker A:On focusing on the book and not, like, little snippets you can read online. No, we will never know how tall he is.
>> Grace Todd:We won't. And it's a. It's a damn tragedy. But I think he's. He's a pretty tall dude, actually, because I. There are pictures of him in the middle of this book here. I can show. I can show you.
>> Speaker A:Maybe he's not tall. Maybe he's just, like, tall for a Russian.
>> Grace Todd:I think the Russians are pretty tall, aren't they? I don't think they're like, a particularly short people.
>> Speaker A:I don't know. I don't know.
>> Grace Todd:Here he is giving, the Harvard commencement speech in the 1970s.
>> Speaker A:Looking good.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh.
>> Speaker A:What's he doing down at Harvard? well, doing anti Communist talks.
>> Grace Todd:So here's, Here's what happened to Solzhenitsyn. So he does his eight years in the Gulag after making some, honestly, pretty stupid comments about Stalin.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. And then he joins the John Birch Society.
>> Grace Todd:Not quite so. He is lit out. He writes the manuscript for a day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It is not the first novel that he starts after he gets out of the Gulag, but it is the first novel he finishes. It is the first novel that he gets published, and it is the novel that rockets him to fame. As I said in at the beginning of Part one, the novel is only published to begin with because Khrushchev thinks that he can use it as a sort of anti Stalinist propaganda, but not anti communist propaganda.
>> Speaker A:All right. I don't think that's how everyone outside of the USSR is going to look at it.
>> Grace Todd:Correct. That is exactly what happened. And part of the reason it was like a bomb going off both in and out of Russia is that it was essentially the first time that the Gulag system had been acknowledged at all in print. The Gulags were not officially written about. They were certainly not portrayed. There were all of these people who had their own stories of either being in the Gulags themselves or. Or having loved ones shipped off to them. But you weren't meant to talk about it, let alone write a novel that has this much detail about what life is actually like inside of these prisons. This made him almost immediately a, kind of darling of the west, which the USSR did not love, which is.
>> Speaker A:Why he's given commencement speeches at Harvard.
>> Grace Todd:So, what followed? And it's a fascinating story, and I regret to say that there are not a lot. There aren't really any good biographies of him. There's one written by a man named Michael Scammell, who I don't trust.
>> Speaker A:A man named Scammell?
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. They did not get along. By the time Scammell finished working on the biography, he and Solzhenitsyn apparently hated each other.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:So that's not terribly trustworthy. And then the only other biography I could find that uses a lot of Scammell's scholarship is this massive tome, called Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn A Century in His Life by D.M. thomas. And I can say without reservation that it is the worst author biography I have ever read.
>> Speaker A:Nice. So we will never know his height.
>> Grace Todd:We will never know his height. but just very quickly, because I read many hundreds of pages of this book, and I. It's my podcast, so I can complain if I want to. Diem, Thomas is not a biographer. He's not even a nonfiction writer. He's a novelist who made his career writing novels about that, like, historical fiction novels that were set in Russia. He was an Englishman, and he clearly wanted to be writing a novel. And so this book is chockabock, full of complete supposition that's half presented as fact, like whole conversations and things. Like, he. He really wanted to be writing a novel, but also he wrote a novel at some point before he wrote this book about Freud. And I guess he never put that down. And so this book is also full of random, absolutely overstepping Freudian projection. He, like, diagnoses Solzhenitsyn with having an anal temperament, a la Freud.
>> Speaker A:All right. I do love it when non doctors try to diagnose people.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh. Yeah, it's great.
>> Speaker A:You know, I've learned to say, like, oh, this person has these types of tendencies, but I'm not a doctor. I'm just trying to get a feel.
>> Grace Todd:On the person at least, like, once a chapter, he'll be like, Freud says, ooh, yeah.
>> Speaker A:Why didn't you just let Freud write the book?
>> Grace Todd:And also D.M. thomas.
>> Speaker A:D.M. thomas also sounds like a Grindr name.
>> Grace Todd:He appears to not have really thought in his heart of hearts that women are people.
>> Speaker A:Again, Grindr name.
>> Grace Todd:And as a result of that, it is hard to tell how much Solzhenitsyn thought women were people. so there's that.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. he's writing a book where the only women that exist are people who write letters many, many miles away.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, that's understandable when you are writing about a. Yeah, yeah, yeah, prison. Solzhenitsyn. Very complicated when it comes to women. He was a real asshole to his.
>> Speaker A:First wife and second wife seems to.
>> Grace Todd:Have been much less of an asshole to his second wife. But also she was 28 and he was 50 when they got together.
>> Speaker A:No, I mean his first and second wife are the same person.
>> Grace Todd:sorry. Yes. His wife divorced him while he was in the Gulag.
>> Speaker A:Everybody deserves a second chance.
>> Grace Todd:And then they remarried when he got out of the Gulag. And then he abandoned her and divorced her against her will when he was 50 because he met a 28 year old.
>> Speaker A:What can I say? This man loves natalias.
>> Grace Todd:So he's, We are not here to hero worship Solzhenitsyn.
>> Speaker A:He's just a man who went in a military or in a Gulag and bad things happened to him. And he wrote about it very nicely.
>> Grace Todd:So he comes out, he writes this novel, and it does not take long, especially once his second and third novels are in progress, for the sort of Soviet machine to decide that maybe they are not a big fan of him after all. And this is in part because, like I said, he immediately became like a media darling in the West. They all loved Ivan Denisovich. And then ultimately his second and third novels were published in the United States and the uk. They were not published in Russia. They weren't allowed to be published in Russia. For all of his faults, he was a. He was a pretty courageous guy who was, not good at shutting the fuck up.
>> Speaker A:What now?
>> Grace Todd:He was not good at shutting the fuck up.
>> Speaker A:I can see that. I can see that entirely. you know that lady who's like, in North Korea, they don't even have, they don't even have toilets. They make you save all your poop.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, I know the one you're talking about.
>> Speaker A:He seems like a more genuine version of that.
>> Grace Todd:You know, he isn't actually. And that's one of the things I find so interesting about him. So he continues refusing to shut the. Up the KGB almost like maybe, certainly definitely tries to assassinate him with ricin.
>> Speaker A:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:It doesn't work.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, you gotta come up with something bigger.
>> Grace Todd:Which is wild.
>> Speaker A:which, by the way, by the way, her name is Yeoni Park. I'd like to see Kim Jong Un trying to assassinate Yeoni Park.
>> Grace Todd:Keep that comparison in Your mind? Because this is one of the things that I think is fascinating about Solzhenitsyn in a general sense. So he is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. As, we all are.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. Not for this book. He refuses to go and accept the Nobel Prize because by this point he is not all the way divorced and his mistress is pregnant.
>> Speaker A:Oh. Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And he is concerned that if he leaves to accept the Nobel Prize, they won't let him, him come back. So he sort of receives it in absentia. They attempt to murder him with ricin. It doesn't work. He survives. And they don't feel like they can do anything about him publicly because he's just been given the Nobel Prize for Literature. He's too popular on the world stage. And so they exile him. They put him, they arrest him and put him on a plane for West Germany and just boot him out of the country.
>> Speaker A:All right, that's the end of him, I guess.
>> Grace Todd:Well, it's not.
>> Speaker A:Oh, what does he do after being a Nobel Prize winner and pregnant with a 20 something year old.
>> Grace Todd:So unsurprisingly, the United States falls all over itself to invite him in.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah. As the, as they do.
>> Grace Todd:And it's this very like, again, this is like peak Cold War. Like it is the 70s. Everyone's like, yes, like rah, rah. We got social, like the most famous, you know, communist hating Russian dissident of them all. And he almost immediately pisses everyone off.
>> Speaker A:Hell yeah, that's my guy.
>> Grace Todd:And lets everyone down because. And very few people.
>> Speaker A:Because he's not willing to play the Yomi park game. Of what? Just making up stories that they all want to hear.
>> Grace Todd:Well, not only is he not willing to play the Yomi park game, it's not just that he's not willing to exaggerate, it's that he is immediately suspicious of the United States.
>> Speaker A:Ah. As one should be.
>> Grace Todd:In part because he thinks that they are incapable from separating their anti communism from their Russophobia.
>> Speaker A:Well, that's true. Go on.
>> Grace Todd:And he like we're in.
>> Speaker A:What year is it now? 2025. Like we still have like, Trump is aligned with Russia and like hammer and sickle.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. And so he arrives and it's supposed to be this like big like rah, rah, we got your best novelist. Right. Like it's supposed to be this big dunk on the Soviet Union. And instead of doing what everyone clearly wanted him to do, which was get to the United States and be like, it's so amazing here I love it, and I'm never going to leave. He got to the United States and insistently and very publicly was like, the Soviet Union is going to collapse. And the day that it does, I'm going home.
>> Speaker A:How did that turn out? Are you gonna spoil that ending for me or do I have to read another book?
>> Grace Todd:and the sort of American intelligentsia turned on him immediately. But he did. He lived. The Soviet Union fell. He went back to Russia. He spent the rest of his life in Russia. He died in 2008.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:he was in exile in the United States for, I think, 17 years, something like that.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, until the fall of the Soviet Union. Was he just like on the first plane into Moscow?
>> Grace Todd:So this is one of the things that's really interesting and this is sort of the thing that I want to talk about with him in a general sense. So Solzhenitsyn has been kind of adopted by the American right wing. And it is because he was vehemently anti communist and very religious. And one of the reasons that I chose this novel, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, instead of like Gulag Archipelago or the Red Circle, which are two of the books that he wrote later in his career, is that by the time he writes Gulag Archipelago, which is sort of his most famous, his second, his other most famous novel, he's significantly more sort of aware of himself as being like a figurehead anti communist writer. Like very emphatically, he's turned himself into a sort of political figure more than a literary one.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, he wants to jump on the anti communist movement.
>> Grace Todd:He, he wants to be.
>> Speaker A:But he's alienated from the American right anti, communist movement because he, he's still like pro Russia. Yes, he loves Russia. He wants to go back to a non communist Russia.
>> Grace Todd:He loves mother Russia. He is definitely like low key, kind of a monarchist.
>> Speaker A:Oh, he wants the, he wants, where's Anastasia? Put her in power.
>> Grace Todd:But when the Soviet Union falls. He was famous more politically than he was as a writer at that point. And there were people who were apparently sort of agitating for him to come back to Russia immediately.
>> Speaker A:First helicopter into Da Nang.
>> Grace Todd:And he hedged, he waited.
>> Speaker A:Okay, look, you gotta wait for that first McDonald's to open up.
>> Grace Todd:And I think. Well, I think when it really came to it, he cared about himself and his life more as a writer than as a politician.
>> Speaker A:All right, but, I mean, but do you know about the, the Moscow McDonald's?
>> Grace Todd:Would you like to tell us about the Moscow McDonald's you seem like you'd really like to tell us about the Moscow McDonald's.
>> Speaker A:It's such a great feat in, like, Americans wanting to. To jump in there right away of how they, like, there was just wasn't enough resources to open up this McDonald's, but they made it work. They had, like, airlift burgers in. They had to make, like, a separate, like, power facility to make sure that the. That McDonald's had enough power.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, that sounds right.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, it was. It was fantastic.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, bless. Maybe he went to the Moscow McDonald's.
>> Speaker A:I don't see how he didn't go to the Moscow McDonald's.
>> Grace Todd:Well, he'd been living in the United States. He was maybe probably a little burned out on it. He did not like it here.
>> Speaker A:It's the convenience.
>> Grace Todd:He was not a man who valued convenience. That was kind of the end to his. He gave a whole speech at Harvard that was in no small part. It was the Harvard commencement speech. And it was basically about how the west was making everyone soft and, like, lacking in moral fiber.
>> Speaker A:Soy boys.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, a little bit. And it also. And so. And so stuff like that is why the contemporary American right have kind of adopted him. But if you actually read stuff like his speech at Harvard, he is correctly identifying a lot of problems that we have that are not the kind of problems that conservatives want us identifying. Like, one of the things he talks about is the illusion of the free press in the United States.
>> Speaker A:Go on.
>> Grace Todd:and essentially how we don't have state censorship of our press. Theoretically, the press could write about anything it wants, and yet our journalists seem to do nothing but write about things that maintain the status quo at all costs.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. I believe that that's. Shoot, what's that guy's name? man, now I don't feel smart because I don't remember that man's name. Noam, Chomsky. There we go. Yeah, Noam Chomsky. And, Geez, now you're putting me on the spot. I should have done research, but. Yeah, on how everything is in the corporate media's funnel to echo the same talking points.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. If Solzhenitsyn is the patron saint of anybody, it would be like the 2% of people that are ardent Christians and old school libertarians. Not current libertarians.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah. Not the kind of libertarians that. Well, I don't know. How. How young was his second wife?
>> Grace Todd:28.
>> Speaker A:Okay. No, no, no. He's not that kind of.
>> Grace Todd:She wasn't.
>> Speaker A:That's too old for most libertarians.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. She was like a whole ass adult. Even if it's a, it's a little GROSS When a 50 year old man ditches his first wife to impregnate a 28 year old. Like that's not great. But she wasn't a teenager.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, she knew what she was getting into.
>> Grace Todd:She's a grown up.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, she really liked that. A Day in the Life.
>> Grace Todd:But one of the things that I really like about this novel specifically is that it comes before Solzhenitsyn is Solzhenitsyn the famous anti communist. And I think that this novel is his most vulnerable and his most complicated in a lot of ways because I think this novel represents a man who has had his entire understanding of the world upended and is still grappling with what he thinks in the aftermath.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, and also I wasn't getting like anti communist vibes in this book. I mean, you're the one that read it, but as you read it to me, I wasn't getting anti communist vibes. I was getting like this government is bad and this government happens to be communist. But those two things aren't connected. It's that the people who are running it are bad.
>> Grace Todd:And I think that's part of the thing, is that Solzhenitsyn is an anti communist because of his life experiences. To him, Soviet Russia and communism are interchangeable. And I don't blame him for drawing that conclusion because the things that he witnessed were horrific and deeply traumatizing. And I'm not surprised that he fell back on a sort of misplaced nostalgia for a time that he had no recollection of. Remember he was born in 1918.
>> Speaker A:Well, you know, Sigmund Freud says.
>> Grace Todd:I will throw this book at you as the. This I suffered.
>> Speaker A:That is a big book for saying almost nothing.
>> Grace Todd:But like Solzhenitsyn is a. He was an all or nothing thinker. Right. Communism was the best or communism was the worst. And I think this novel occurred at a rare point where he wasn't in. In an all or nothing place. And that's why it's so empathetic and so nuanced. It's about humanity and the horrific things that we are capable of inflicting on each other. And it's about the flaws of the system he was in. Yes, but he's not yet doing the thing where he is writing these kind of big screeds about the communist threat and the way that it is warping people's brains.
>> Speaker A:The woke mind virus.
>> Grace Todd:The woke mind virus.
>> Speaker A:A little bit, yeah. Like he sounds way too compatible with American right wingers. Why didn't it work out?
>> Grace Todd:Well, like I said, they've adopted him now. The contemporary American right are big fans of Solzhenitsyn.
>> Speaker A:It took a while for it to work out.
>> Grace Todd:And Putin is a fan. Big fan of Solzhenitsyn.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because Putin also hates communism and loves Russia.
>> Grace Todd:He's a, he's just, he's a very complicated figure because I think at the end of the day, I don't think he would approve of modern conservatives. I genuinely don't.
>> Speaker A:I don't, I don't even know how modern conservatives can look at themselves in the mirror.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, that's a good, that's a good point. But I really like this novel. I like the empathy of it, I like the spirituality of it. I like the questions that it's asking, and I like the person that this novel captures and came from. And I think it's a little bit of a shame that Solzhenitsyn evolved into a little bit more of a kind, of hard headed didact as he aged. But I also think that that is hard not to do when you are genuinely risking life and limb and being persecuted for the act of writing novels.
>> Speaker A:Like, he suffered a lot or writing letters to your buddies.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. I think it understandably turned him into something of an extremist. You know, it radicalized him, which is what happens.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. wouldn't it be great if he also, like. Well, he. No, I take that back. Yeah, he did the same thing with American media on how it manufactures, consent. I remembered it.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Well, and that's, that's the funniest thing is he has been adopted by the, the contemporary American right wing because of the anti communism, but they sure are silent about the whole lifelong, crusade against censorship part. Yeah, they don't really love that part. They're not interested.
>> Speaker A:And like, I, I know a lot of people that have like, gotten way too deep in the right wing spheres to say it lightly, you know, and then they come out and like, they don't want to be political because they, they know how bad that is, like how it ruined their life. And like when you talk to them about like certain issues, they still tend to have like a right wing perspective because it's. Because they just didn't like, wash everything out of their brain. Like a lot of the tendencies are still there. And so like, he grew up as a communist.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Speaker A:And so, like a lot of the tendencies are still there. Like not the party dynamics, but, like, the reasons why he would want to be a communist are still there. Like, he believes in the good of everyone. And like, that's, that's very apparent in there of like, I'm gonna give you this biscuit. Why are you giving me a biscuit? What do you get out of it? It's like we look out for everyone here.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Speaker A:Like, that's the mentality that he has that made him a communist, that maybe not everyone else will see it that way.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. And it's one of the things that is heartbreaking about censorship and radicalization is like, I would have loved to see the novelist that Solzhenitsyn could have become if he hadn't been turned almost against his will, into a political figurehead first and a writer second. You know what I mean?
>> Speaker A:Yeah. I would like to know what would become of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson if he wasn't a political figure and then a writer. What, what fascinating things about dragons would he tell us?
>> Grace Todd:God. But yeah, and I, I don't know. My, my sort of like my closing thought on Ivan Denisovich and censorship. I mean, and like, we don't have time for me to really spin out the whole honestly, very frightening tale of his life after this novel. And as his next novels were published, but like, friends of his were arrested and tortured. A friend of his died who had been helping him work on the manuscripts of, of his novels. Like, it was, it was bad. It was very, very frightening. He was arrested multiple times. The kgb, they were bugging his house. They were on a harassment campaign against him. He made it out by the skin of his teeth. And he was. And that's very courageous. Whoever he has been adopted by, whatever viewpoints he had later in life, he genuinely suffered in the name of openness and truth. And he truly believed in those things as well. And that is admirable, regardless. And the one thing that kind of bummed me out, like reading all of this, reading this novel, reading his biography, reading about the impact of his work is like, when he returned to Russia later in life, he thought he was going to be going back to a populace of people who had read his books, who like, knew him as a writer, and they didn't. And one of the things that multiple, I saw, multiple people writing about is that he came back to a westernized Russia. And one of the things that happened as a byproduct of that Westernization is that the very long held Russian habit of reading serious literature, no matter where you were in society this Was they were a deeply literate society and always had been like, they Russians love to read complicated books. It's part of their national character. And one of the things that some of these books said was that they, that Westernization kind of took that away. That they had, they had, after all of the suppression, after all of these years, they had access to like glossy Western magazines and tabloids. And he came back to a country full of people who were no longer habitually reading complicated literature.
>> Speaker A:Damn. No one ever watches anime anymore.
>> Grace Todd:And it kind of broke his heart, you know. But one of the things that is such a bummer reading it from now, from the perspective of living in, you know, in the United States in the year of our Lord 2025, is like, we don't even need state censorship. Right.
>> Speaker A:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Difficult, ideas. Difficult books don't make it out alive. Not because the state is overtly censoring them, but because we now have censorship through money.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. And also, let's say the book who's Afraid of Gender by Judith Butler, you familiar with that book? Yeah, it's, it's quite an informative book. Made me hate the Pope. It's not, not an easy task. And I'm thinking to myself, why isn't this on everybody's, to read list? This is, this is, this is a great book. It especially like, explains how, the American right wing has like, assembled itself for its own benefit on defending its idea of gender, imposing its idea of gender.
>> Grace Todd:Mm
>> Speaker A:And by the way, it's free on Spotify.
>> Grace Todd:Oh.
>> Speaker A:Included it on premium in your Spotify and not seeing that circulated more. Not seeing more discussions on that. As opposed to like, you know, whenever some, some right wing dipshit's got a new book out, that becomes the talk.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, well, and that's difficult. Ideas aren't propagated because they aren't lucrative. Yeah, that's it. It's.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah. You can make a movie like what is a woman? And you just say like, biological, human, female, and be like, ahaha, I gotcha. As opposed to having a long, difficult book explaining what the heck is a gender.
>> Grace Todd:It's censorship that propagates itself without anyone having to do anything at all. And it's a, it's a shame.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, dog. What are we gonna do about that? I. I think we need to take the American conservatives, throw them into gulags and re. Educate them.
>> Grace Todd:I think that's a great idea.
>> Speaker A:I think that's our only option.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. it's the only way Forward. Well, that got a little unhinged and rambly. But you've experienced Yvonne Denisovich. We've had a bit of a talk about Solzhenitsyn and his life and his experiences. What do you want to know? Any questions?
>> Speaker A:Not so keen on that book. I could take a pass on it.
>> Grace Todd:Too much of a bummer or too, minute?
>> Speaker A:Yeah, maybe if it was, like, more days in his life.
>> Grace Todd:Just the one is letting you down.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, maybe there was, like, a day where there was, like, a nice summer shower and they all got to run around in the rain. I know, I know. That had to happen at least once.
>> Grace Todd:So if I. If you come back on, are we gonna have to do something like, a little more chipper get?
>> Speaker A:Look, I'm gonna come back on, and, it doesn't matter what it is. I'm. If you get something more exciting, I'll make it more negative. All right, if you get something very, negative, I'll try to make it exciting.
>> Grace Todd:Fair enough.
>> Speaker A:But, yeah, let this man enjoy his egg.
>> Grace Todd:Give the man an egg. All right, well, I hope I explained, enough of the very complicated life of Solzhenitsyn and the very depressing life of Ivan Denisovich. Thanks so much for joining me, buddy.
>> Speaker A:You know, glad to be here. And if you didn't hear the first time, I'm, Goad Gatsby on Twitter, Goad Bluesky Social, and also Goad Ghost IO. I'm trying to have a newsletter here, man. You can get all these things for free?
>> Grace Todd:Hell, yeah. Sign up for Goad's newsletter. And thank, all of you for being here. I very much appreciate it. And as always, if you can, this week, this month, this pay period, consider supporting a living author, especially one who writes difficult books, because they could really, really use the love. Bye.
>> Speaker A:and also, you can impress people with a book on your bookshelf that says, who's afraid of gender?
>> Grace Todd:Didn't read. It was created, written, researched, and recorded by me, M. Grace Todd. Maddie Wood is our co producer and social media maven. Editing by Tali, a true podcasting professional, and Grace Todd. Our theme song is Books 2.0. Written, performed, and recorded by William Albritton. Our logo was designed and illustrated by the incredibly talented Jess versus Special thanks to blackiris Social Club in Richmond, Virginia. Reach out to us with questions, concerns, or academic scrutiny at, didn't readititpodmail, dot com.