Scholar and writer Mary Grabar documents just how bad it has gotten in literary studies, with its jargon-ridden, meaning-denying, politically-correct scholarship that tears down authors instead of helping us understand them. Dr. Grabar zeroes in on how our establishment universities are giving the heroic Alexander Solzhenitsyn pretty much the same treatment he received in the Soviet gulags. A sample, referring to his story “Matryona’s Home,” about a woman living out her Christian faith amidst the cruelties of communism:
Under “classroom strategies” in the Norton instructor’s manual, teachers are told that they are likely to encounter the problem of students accepting the “truth” of what Solzhenitsyn has to say: “Because the story answers to most of the myths and preconceptions Westerners already have about Soviet life, the problem will be to make sure that students read it with the same degree of resistance with which they would normally confront any other piece of fiction.” Here we have the apologists for communism directing teachers: All that you’ve heard about the brutality of communism is merely part of our “myths and preconceptions.” Students must be reeducated to “resist” the testimony of Solzhenitsyn as dramatized in his fictional account.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In