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miam's review
5.0
Hilarious, especially the strange details used to describe characters. Here are the two main characters, for example: "Ivan Ivanovitch's head is like a radish, tail down; Ivan Nikiforovitch's like a radish with the tail up... Ivan Ivanovitch gets into a terrible rage if a fly falls into his beet soup. Then he is fairly beside himself; he flings away his plate and the housekeeper catches it. Ivan Nikiforovitch is very fond of bathing; and when he gets up to the neck in water, orders a table and a samovar, or tea urn, to be placed on the water, for he is very fond of drinking tea in that cool position."
I love the contrast between the formal language and the physical comedy (one Ivan getting stuck in a door, the other creeping into his neighbor's yard at night to chop down a goose coop, a one-eyed man who won't stop talking about having only one eye). Also the narrator gradually becomes less invisible and more ridiculous throughout the book. Wish I appreciated Gogol more when I had to read him in college.
I love the contrast between the formal language and the physical comedy (one Ivan getting stuck in a door, the other creeping into his neighbor's yard at night to chop down a goose coop, a one-eyed man who won't stop talking about having only one eye). Also the narrator gradually becomes less invisible and more ridiculous throughout the book. Wish I appreciated Gogol more when I had to read him in college.
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