A lexander Solzhenitsyn has been rather belittled on his death. Not
knowing any Russian, I cannot judge his prose style, but when people complain that he was unrelentingly serious, they are applying the wrong criteria. Solzhenitsyn was prophetic, and obsessed with truth-telling in a world of lies. His mission led him to believe that no time must be wasted, no compromises made. This made him difficult in some ways, in literature and in life, but what of it? His compassion consisted of what the word really means — a suffering with others — rather than an easy friendliness. No doubt Isaiah and Ezekiel were potentially tricky dinner companions, but then they were not put on this earth to behave like Sydney Smith. The fact that people mock Solzhenitsyn suggests that, subliminally, they do not quite believe the horror of the Gulag. Like Holocaustdeniers, they are complaining because someone makes people remember what they would prefer them to forget.
It is a relief, nevertheless, to hear that Solzhenitsyn’s company was enjoyable. In 1983, the novelist arrived in London to be presented with the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion by Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace. There was a bit of a row because Solzhenitsyn wanted to publish his acceptance speech for samizdat circulation in the Soviet Union. The royal bureaucracy, perhaps fearing Soviet ire, told him he could not. My friend Malcolm Pearson, who had helped Solzhenitsyn in the past and had palace connections, was called in to sort things out (publication was permitted). Solzhenitsyn immediately endorsed his enormous Templeton cheque to Malcolm and asked him to get it banked in Switzerland, by which means it reached Soviet dissidents. Then he met Malcolm’s German pointer, Fred, and was much taken with him. When he heard that Fred was happiest in Scotland, where Malcolm has a house near Rannoch Moor, he declared that he had always longed to go there. So off they went, without preparation, Malcolm and the Solzhenitsyns getting onto the sleeper at Euston. He was ‘funny, easy and cosy’ as a guest, says Malcolm, with ‘no bitterness, nothing irascible’. He got up early each day to write (he never had undiluted holiday), had a late breakfast and then went exploring. He loved driving round the Highlands, and when they passed Birnam he recited the relevant verses of Macbeth in Russian. He went up in an argocat to survey Rannoch Moor and then strolled about the tops, enjoying the wilderness. In the Black Wood, they came across a teeming anthill. Poking it, Solzhenitsyn said: ‘Socialism works, you see!’ I gather that Solzhenitsyn later wrote a story about Scotland, which has never been published. I should like to read it, even if it isn’t funny.
Anyway, as mentioned in last week’s Notes, our public culture now has little idea of what is actually funny: it just makes it compulsory to laugh. My children sometimes drink Innocent smoothies. The cartons are a riot of ‘jokes’. They are full of phrases like ‘shake before pouring, not after’. On the underside of the drink made of pomegranates, blueberries and acai, it says, ‘Because this recipe is a bit special, we thought we’d put it in a gold carton. But the gold ink had nasty, metallic stuff [‘stuff’, by the way, is a key word deployed to indicate you are being informal] in it, so we went for this yellowy-brown instead.’ On the underside of the mangoes and passion fruits smoothie, it says ‘Stop looking at my bottom’. All these gags are mixed with self-righteous eco-boasts — ‘All our bananas come from Rainforest Alliance Certified plantations. The Rainforest Alliance champions farm workers’ rights and promotes growing practices that benefit ecosystems and encourage biodiversity. We love them.’ They say the smoothies have ‘NO GM stuff’, ‘NO E numbers’, ‘NO funny business’, etc, ‘And if we do you can tell our mums.’ But, according to the Daily Telegraph, the smoothies are not produced in Britain and transported by rail, as customers are told, but blended in Rotterdam and then transported, once they reach Britain for bottling, by tanker lorries. One senses that, once Innocent is accused of being Guilty, its laid-back, what a-laff qualities will vanish, and be replaced by unsmiling corporate lawyers. As it says, ‘NO funny business’.
Last month, the Lord-Lieutenant of our county, Phyllida Stewart-Roberts, qualified for her free television licence and therefore retired. Few people know exactly what Lord-Lieutenants do, because the office is lost in the mists of time. The chief duty is to represent the Queen in the county. Nowadays, this has come to mean spreading a general benevolence — publicising good charities, recommending worthy people for honours and worthy causes for awards, suggesting possible magistrates, turning up at occasions which assist the county’s pride or prosperity or (in floods, for example) comfort its distress. Unlike, possibly, most Lord-Lieutenants, Mrs Stewart-Roberts is very beautiful, so everyone enjoys seeing her go about her official duties; but even if she were not, she could still lay claim to an achievement which is denied to all those who hold political office — she has done nothing but good. I know the Lord-Lieutenancy is not at the cutting edge of social thought, but there is something to be learned, as we all fret about the ‘broken society’, from its spirit of unquenchable — and unpaid — goodwill.
We are in a ‘Dear Mary’ situation. A friend rang and asked me for our address to invite us to a party. The invitations went out (I know this from others), but ours never arrived. I am not offended if we have not been asked, but I fretted that the invitation was lost in the post and we looked rude for not answering it. So I emailed the friend. No reply, quite possibly because I guessed his email address from memory. Now I feel like Mr Pooter after trying unsuccessfully to get the Blackfriars Bi-weekly News to report that he and his wife went to the Lord Mayor’s Ball: ‘My time is far too valuable to bother with such trifles.’ One of David Cameron’s 38 summer reading recommendations for his MPs is a book called Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. It is only the latest example of a genre of book which cleverly identifies something in the zeitgeist, contributes a ‘how to’ element to the problem, and discloses 90 per cent of its message in its title. Small Is Beautiful and Freakonomics are classic examples. After Nudge, I suggest a book called Yank: How to Spot a Trend in America, and Make Millions Worldwide.
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