In the previous posting about Milan Kundera*, I made a waggish comment placing Kundera on the humor spectrum next to Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) the Russian dissident and Nobel Prize winner. Solzhenitsyn was the author of August 1914 (1971), The Gulag Archipelago (1973-78), Cancer Ward (1968) and many other works.
The reasoning behind that joke was that it reminded me of the work of another writer Ian Frazier who is also mentioned briefly in that same posting. Frazier has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1974 and author of gobs of other books. (Many of which I have read and enjoyed, see The Book Shopper, pages 80-82 ).
But one of my favorite pieces of his is "Kimberly Solzhenitsyn's Diary" which comes from one of early collections Dating Your Mom, a copy which I rescued in true book shopper fashion from a discount dolly at the Hoopeston (IL) Public Library.
Enjoy.
Example of Kundera humor: "Fiction that avoids or denies feces, Milan Kundera has written, is kitsch". - Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review (7/23/23)
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