Andrew Sullivan is unable to locate "cross in sand" passage from 'Gulag Archipelago"... anyone?

[npincus]

Sullivan is hot on the trail of this possible McCain fakery... does anyone have "Gulag Archipelago" and/or can you locate the actual passage that mcCain may have 'borrowd"? Sullivan will follow up.

Man, do I hope this story has legs.


http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/the-dirt-in-the.html

Then this: I've also been unable to locate the actual alleged passage in the Gulag Archipelago that is referred to in Luke Veronis' "The Sign Of The Cross." (If anyone does, please let me know.)

[e-mail] <[e-mail]>

[Lucinda]

1. Even if he does find something it doesnt mean it didn't happen in some form to McCain

Lots of stuff with teeth to hit McCain on out there...

[Spazito]

2. Yep, including this as opposed to excluding this, imo n/t

[npincus]

6. read the AS's piece.. now a reference to McCain telling the NYT the cross story- about SOMEONE ELSE!

http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2008/08/the-mccain-cross-in-the-dirt-s.html

Several contributors to the comment thread on my first post have pointed to this rather stunning New York Times piece from 2000 in which McCain tells the story - but about someone else!

Many years ago a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam was tied in torture ropes by his tormentors and left alone in an empty room to suffer through the night. Later in the evening a guard he had never spoken to entered the room and silently loosened the ropes to relieve his suffering. Just before morning, that same guard came back and re-tightened the ropes before his less humanitarian comrades returned. He never said a word to the grateful prisoner, but some months later, on a Christmas morning, as the prisoner stood alone in the prison courtyard, the same good Samaritan walked up to him and stood next to him for a few moments. Then with his sandal, the guard drew a cross in the dirt. Both prisoner and guard both stood wordlessly there for a minute or two, venerating the cross, until the guard rubbed it out and walked away.

[highplainsdem]

13. I can hardly believe Waldman or anyone else could be so foolish. It's obvious from the NY Times

piece that McCain is talking about himself in third person there. A very obvious fact Jake Tapper mentioned over a month ago

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/07/mccains-new-wil.html

before this Internet hysteria over the story.

I thought it was "stunning" when I noticed yesterday that someone commenting on Waldman's earlier blog about the cross story had misread the NY Times piece in such a dimwitted way. I'm amazed Waldman would make a similar mistake. Again, people seem to be getting caught up in mass hysteria.

This is the NY Times piece, at the link provided by the silly person who originally posted the incorrect conclusion about it in a comment at Waldman's blog:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904EFDE1239F93AA15751C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

What McCain was doing there, referring to himself in third person as a "scared prisoner of war," is no different from what Barack Obama would be doing if he switched to third person and said something like, "Years ago, a state senator from Illinois gave a keynote speech..."

We'd know Obama was talking about himself, and it's a clear sign of how hysterical this has become that anyone could have misread that section of McCain's speech as referring to "someone else."


I don't have any way of knowing whether or not McCain's story is true. However, I do know that simply the fact there was a similar story in a book of Solzhenitsyn's does NOT mean McCain's story isn't also true, because in a situation where people are being watched and have limited ways of communicating surreptitiously, drawing and then erasing a symbol or word isn't at all unusual. So many people here are acting as if that had never happened before.

[JackORoses]

18. nothing to see here, pay no attention, huh?

you guys are so very transparent.

[Youphemism]

3. Solzhenitsyn wrote more than one book that included the gulags...

I recall a description of them in "The Cancer Ward," also. It might be in that book. Though I don't remember that scene offhand, it's been decades since I read it.

[liberalmuse]

4. Story retold in 'Sign of the Cross'...

I'm not sure which of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's books the story is from, but it was reproduced in:

Sign of the Cross
by
Bert Ghezzi
Published 2004
Pages 3-4

The reference where he got the story from should be in the back of the book.

Also, from digby:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/if-nose-grows-in-forest.html

BTW, this story is ALL over the intertubes.

[kevinmc]

5. I sent him an email yesterday with all that stuff and asked him for his Professional.

Writers Opinion if it was Plagiarism.

And gave him a link.

Here's whatI sent him ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6655276&mesg_id=6655296

[kevinmc]

7. Here's the email I sent him ....

To: [e-mail]
Subject: Since you are a Professional Writer, what do you think of this….
Date: Aug 18, 2008 1:28 AM

Is this plagiarism?

Did McCain ad lift 'cross in the dirt' story from Russian novelist?

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), in a Christmas-themed December ad for his presidential
campaign, told the following story:

"One night, after being mistreated as a POW, a guard loosened the ropes binding
me, easing my pain. On Christmas, that same guard approached me, and without saying
a word, he drew a cross in the sand. We stood, wordlessly, looking at the cross,
remembering the true light of Christmas. I'll never forget that no matter where
you are, no matter how difficult the circumstances, there will always be someone
who will pick you up."

"It just sounded so fake and so contrived, so I did a little research about
it," said DailyKos contributor rickrocket. The research revealed a similar
story by recently departed novelist and McCain favorite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
recounting his experience in a Soviet gulag in The Gulag Archipelago, released in
the United States in 1973. Luke Veronis, in The Sign of the Cross, recounts:

"Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain
and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking
labor and slow starvation. The intense suffering reduced him to a state of despair.

On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him.
He saw no reason to continue his struggle, no reason to keep on living. His life
made no difference in the world. So he gave up.

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down.
He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed
to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He
had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny
old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick
to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned
to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed.
He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew
there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater
than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that
simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.

Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and went back to work.
Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had received hope."

************

Story with Video and embedded links here:

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Did_McCain_ad_lift_cross_in_0817.html

[Orangepeel]

14. I think he probably wants a page number or something similar

(I realize that would differ depending on the translation and edition).

I've never read anything by Solzhenitsyn and I don't know what the format is. (I know it is a memoir in two volumes, but that's it). Is this story in the book itself or in a recounting by Luke Veronis? (I don't know who that is -- I tried to search on Amazon.com and got a book published in 2004).

Giving people directions on how to find the passage would help fuel the story.

[leftynyc]

8. Everything you need right here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6652541

[npincus]

9. ha ha- TPM Cafe has it:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/08/mccains-cross-story-ripped-off.php

Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after
day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be
nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The intense
suffering reduced him to a state of despair.

On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became
too much for him. He saw no reason to continue his struggle, no reason
to keep on living. His life made no difference in the world. So he gave
up.

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude
bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him
to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to
death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other
prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked
up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said
nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the
Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his
entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the
all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater
than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the
Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that
simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.

Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and
went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had
received hope.

[grantcart]

10. It is irrelevent because it was popularized in other books that referred to it

[JerseygirlCT]

11. Haven't read it in years... wonder if I still have it around... nt

[kevinmc]

12. I just sent him another email with more stuff I found . .... n/t

[Obamann]

15. Be careful

I think if this is to be used against McCain that it should be perfectly sourced - unless we want another Rathergate where the assertion is probably true but the source is specious. Nothing posted here or on the blogs I’ve read gives me a page number, which I believe is what we need.

We should really be using “the google” to get this sorted out. Here’s what I’ve found:

Search: "the sign of the Cross" "felt a presence" -mccain
This returns plenty of hits. It’s important to leave McCain out of the searches since we want to find instances of this passage that are as old as possible. Otherwise everything that pops up will be self-referential and thus useless.

The few matches I looked at seem to mention Luke Veronis and Charles Colson.

This one seems to be the most relevant:


Here’s where it gets interesting. Google book search should be able to find every single account of this story, given we use the right quotes (I’ve already seen a couple variations in what’s supposed to be a verbatim transcript).

http://books.google.com/books

Search: "the sign of the Cross" "felt a presence"


You can see Colson reference Solzhenitsyn, but nothing from The Gulag Archipelago itself.

Search: "nonchalantly used his sandaled foot to draw a cross in the dirt."


Here we find a book by John Trent, written in 2004, that retells John McCain’s story.


What bugs me is that the numerous quotes found here and on the blogs return no matches when searching Solzhenitsyn's books. The best conclusion I can come up with is that the story was retold to Colson or that he just made it up. Either way, it does still leave the possibility that McCain plagiarized it.

Anyway, hope this helps. I’ll now return to my regularly scheduled lurking.

[Igel]

16. Doesn't sound GULagish.

Not like I've read every page of the massive thing. Haven't read most of it. But it doesn't feel right; GULag was less AIS-centered and more GULag centered, prisoner-in-general centered.

Sounds like something that was told about Solzhenitsyn. If it's tracked to a source, it's going to be something told about AIS. Perhaps in an interview. Not scholarly, I don't think; "crosses" and AIS's quirky Orthodoxy didn't score big in Slavistic scholarship. Neither did AIS, if you want to know the truth, apart from "One Day", Matryona's Yard, and a few other things. "Cancer Ward" and the like ... too political, too judgmental in the wrong way.

Definitely not Cancer Ward. That was quasi-autobiographical, but not everything in it was pure AIS.

Haven't read the Krasnoe koleso cycle yet.

[Unsane]

17. Take care not to fall into a Rathergate trap.