i'm about to start pic related. what am I in for?

A satire on the "muh mysterious russian soul" meme.

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spooks

>>9231792
Interesting read for about half of it then I gave up and started with something else.

artificial difficulty: the novel

>>9232541
Wait what are you talking about fuck what did I miss?
Also the part one ending is great.

>>9231792
It's the closest Russians ever got to Charles Dickens

>>9231792
Something praised by writers, and probably for a very different reasons that you may see.

>>9232548
Don't tell me you didn't die in Sen's to some bullshit surprise trap at least once.

Does gogol really get on anyone else's nerves? He comes off as so self-satisfied to me

>>9232579
Use your eyes senpai, the traps are RIGHT THERE

>>9231792
genuinely one of the funniest books I've ever read

>>9232610
Same, I laughed a lot through it

>>9232610
>>9233200
what's funny about it? I read it and I don't remember it as a funny book.

>>9233222
The brevity and dismissal of certain behaviors and castes

The conscription to hierarchy and class

The sycophantic chirping

they're all very comical and Gogol employs them as a master to elucidate the oft neglected unspoken underpinnings of personality in his swansong. reread it.

>>9231792
hilarity, really. it's a very funny novel, there's something in the way Gogol mocks convention that's quite satisfying, about halfway, the humor dries up, though.

my favorite part is where he goes off to narrate a scene and leaves chichikov standing there with his host in the doorway, them arguing for however long it took you to read up to his return to them. it was just a really clever thing to do, also when the child becomes an ambassador.

>>9234465
>them arguing for however long it took you to read up to his return to them
how the fuck did I miss this

>>9234471
yeah they're both in chapter two, just go back and read that chapter, it's not super long.

>>9234471
here's the scene:

Although the time during which they will be passing through the entry, the anteroom, and the dining room is somewhat brief, nevertheless let us see if we can't somehow utilize it to say a thing or two about the master of the house.

then he goes on to do that for about two pages, then:

...but, I confess, I am very much afraid to talk about the ladies, and besides it is high time I returned to my heroes, who have been standing for several minutes now before the doors of the drawing room, each urging the other to enter first.

>>9234516
this isn't funny at all.

>>9234711
for (You)

>>9231792
for some people it's the gateway drug to Russian literature. I believe it is more similar to Maupassant or Hoffmann. The latter may have written of Automatons and Vampires whereas Gogol has a social climber meet serf owners on the countriside (who are a little bit of both).
>>9232413
In the Sobakevich character and perhaps partly in Korobochka. The Manilovs are a satire on folks who do respect their Greeks and Nozdriov is pretty much a Westernizer. Of course all of them (safe for the last one who is introduced to make the point) come off as amusing sympathetic socialites with character to remember, or: with a soul.
>>9232554
That is not quite the case. Gogol doesn't give half a fuck for what the middle and the lower classes think in that novel of his (you could say that he repeatedly doubts IF they do) which makes him so similar to other Russian writers cherished in the West. There are 19th century Russians who tell stories (with gloom or with zest) from the bottoms - Leskov, Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin. I like them, to say, a lot more than the elitarists. The irony in Russian history is that even the socialist revolutionaries were actually elitarian twits who enjoyed their Dostoyevsky.
>>9232556
The "craftsmen" will be most likely praising it for the characterisations. People who are into things 2deep4u will praise the never-made-explicit implications consider the context, namely the fashion for folk culture and for gothic prose, with romantic faustus heroes dominating the scene, with serfdom as the burning issue of the day.
>>9232592
nope.
>>9233222
He's got a plenty of comic techniques there (take the chapter with the fly squadron and with the servant getting drunk) but the plot is naturally gloomy as fuck which is why getting laughing fits is about as appropriate as while watching Tarantino.
>>9234711
It's goofy though. There, a Russian sketch on your exact reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U082iuhsU5s
punchline:
"Courtly Lady: Mister Gogol, are you sure this was a joke?
Nikolai Gogol: Uhm... I don't know lol. But it did make me laugh!"

>>9234878
Thanks Vladimir.