Overview

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852) was a Russian author and playwright of Ukrainian origin, whose deep influence has been widely recognized in world literature. In 1842, he published the short story ""The Overcoat"" (sometimes translated as ""The Cloak""), which is now seen as ""the greatest Russian short story ever written."" At its center is Akaky Akakyevitch, a humble copyist whose life is marked by ridicule, invisibility, and quiet endurance. When his threadbare coat disintegrates, Akaky commissions a new one - a modest garment that rapidly transforms his fate. With it, he is seen, celebrated, and even welcomed. Without it, the fragile dignity it conferred vanishes, and Akaky's sudden ascent collapses under the gravity of indifference. Gogol's tale fractures along this spectral seam - between visible and invisible, poverty and pride, body and soul, coat and man. In its duality, ""The Overcoat"" becomes both elegy and indictment, and, in its misalignment, reveals the spiritual cost of being seen too late.

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Reviews

""The greatest Russian short story ever written."" -Vladimir Nabokov ""Nabokov thought Gogol succeeded when he was visionary, not rational, as in the grimly fantastic story 'The Overcoat.'"" -Leonard Michaels, The Los Angeles Times ""We all came out from under Gogol's overcoat."" -Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé ""Nikolai Gogol's famous long short story, 'The Overcoat' . . . had a marked influence on Russian fiction . . . distinguished by a kind of humor, both gentle and satiric, of which Gogol was a master."" -Tampa Bay Times ""Gogol's story is carried to the baroque extreme."" -The Boston Globe ""'The Overcoat' pointed out Gogol's pity for the underdog."" -The Inter Lake ""Nikolai Gogol is called the father of Russian realism. If this be so, he has engendered a lot of long, depressing, realistic novels, while his own stories are exactly the opposite. For even when describing a tragic scene, Gogol is not dreary or depressing; his writing fairly sparkles with life, wit, charm, and humor."" -Lars-Erik Nelson, New York Herald Tribune ""The end of 'The Overcoat' is in part a parody of literary convention - specifically, that of poetic justice - and a joke at the expense of the mind that would find it."" -Edward Proffitt ""Out of his fear-drenched and God-saturated existence came a tremendous range of characters, more grotesque than realistic, as they are usually taken to be, the monstrously merry and the piteously groveling - from the mammoth-sized, 15th century Cossack hero Taras Bulba to the less than flea-sized contemporary bureaucrats that inhabit 'The Overcoat.'"" -John O'Neill, The Atlanta Journal

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