Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, dead at 89

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn died yesterday.

My first exposure to this great writer was in college, when my speech professor, Mr. Collins (a man for whom teaching "speech" took second place to teaching "clear thinking"), sent us to the library to read a Solzhenitsyn essay.

We had to answer several questions about the reading. The questions required harder, fuller thought than I had ever given to anything, and I'm fairly confident that in my second year of college, I did a genuinely sophomoric job of answering.

A question that stuck with me -- more than the essay itself, even -- was, "How can you tell from reading this that Solzhenitsyn is a Christian?"

I had to infer from the question that Solzhenitsyn was a Christian. There was nothing overt in what he wrote. In my limited experience, there was not the usual whiff of "Christian" about the writing -- by which I mean, "vetted by the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board."

After that class, out of curiosity, I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and a few other essays he wrote, more of which bounced than stuck with me. What did stick from his writing was a dignity, clarity, and foremost truth -- the kind of truth that you do not (cannot) hear from people who have not had close, hard brushes with Truth itself.

I'm sorry you're no longer with us, Mr. Solzhenitsyn, but I'm glad you're home.