Tempest review of Deavel/Wilson anthology
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“Joseph Pearce’s article takes the form of an addendum to his 1999 biography Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile. He links Solzhenitsyn to J.R.R Tolkien, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis, but especially G.K. Chesterton and Maurice Baring. Pearce explains how and why George Orwell and Solzhenitsyn are in opposition to one another in their reading of the totalitarian state, which the former considers “omnipotent” and even “a god,” and the latter views as “merely a demon, a dragon” (196). “I am ineradicable optimist,” Solzhenitsyn told the scholar (197), and one is grateful that he draws attention to an often underappreciated side of the writer’s personality and outlook.”