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    Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
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    Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
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    Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
    Ebook158 pages2 hours

    Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

    By Nikolai Gogol

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Hailed by Nabokov as "the greatest artist that Russia has yet produced," Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) left his mark as a playwright, novelist, and writer of short stories. Gogol's works remain popular with both writers and readers, who prize his originality, imaginative gifts, and sheer exuberance.
    This collection offers an excellent introduction to the author's works. Opening a door to his bizarre world of broad comedy, fantasy, and social commentary, the title story portrays a petty official's mental disintegration as he struggles for the attention of the woman he loves. Set during the repressive rule of Nicholas I, it satirizes the bureaucratic excesses of the era. Additional tales include "The Nevski Prospect," a portrayal of the feverish pace of St. Petersburg street life, and "The Portrait," a gripping depiction of a soul's perdition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMar 12, 2012
    ISBN9780486112916
    Author

    Nikolai Gogol

    Nikolai Gogol was a Russian novelist and playwright born in what is now considered part of the modern Ukraine. By the time he was 15, Gogol worked as an amateur writer for both Russian and Ukrainian scripts, and then turned his attention and talent to prose. His short-story collections were immediately successful and his first novel, The Government Inspector, was well-received. Gogol went on to publish numerous acclaimed works, including Dead Souls, The Portrait, Marriage, and a revision of Taras Bulba. He died in 1852 while working on the second part of Dead Souls.

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    Reviews for Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Gogol's stories offer up a variety of styles and lengths. The book's eponymous story, a precipitous descent into madness, as well as The Nose, are modernist and absurd. The Carriage is a moralistic fable. The Overcoat is the sad tale of a lonely government clerk with a fantastical, ghost story like ending. The longest story, pretty much a short novel, is Taras Bulba, a bit of a medieval legend but in some ways the most realistic of the bunch. The writing stands up to the tests of time. You don't feel like you're reading some stuffy old Russian writer from the early 19th century but a witty and keen observer of people and institutions. It's light and often amusing though the flagrant antisemitism of the Cossacks in the final epic would be deemed extremely politically incorrect by today's standards. Yet, just as the word "nigger" should not be expurgated from Twain's Tom Sawyer, so too should this ancient prejudice be left in tact, revealing not simply a great writer but a man whose views and flaws are reflective of his times.
    • 4/5
      Surprising and refreshing given my experience with other Russian writers. Gogol's stories are contrastingly light and comic, and his intrusive narration sometimes hilarious. His close to "The Nose," a completely absurd tale about a man losing and then finding his nose (which in the meantime has been disguising itself as a government official), made me laugh out loud: . . . I cannot understand. It's absolutely beyond me. But strangest of all, the most incomprehensible thing, is that there are authors who can choose such subjects to write about. This, I confess, is completely inexplicable. It's like. . . no, no, I can't understand it at all. In the first place, there is absolutely no advantage in it for our mother country. Secondly. . . well, what advantage is there in it at all? I simply cannot understand what it is. . .
      However, when all is said and done, and although, of course, we conceive the possibility, one and the other, and maybe even. . . Well, but then what exists without consistencies? And still, if you give it a thought, there is something to it. Whatever you may say, such things do happen-- seldom, but they do.
      "The Diary of a Madman" was intersting in its description of the rise of a man's insanity, and it was much funnier and more readable than something like Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. "The Overcoat" is justifiably famous, and Gogol displays a gift for creating an incredibly sympathetic main character, however pathetic.

      In all of the shorter stories, you see the typical characterization of Russian bureacracy and society as some huge immovable force, with ridiculous stratification and labrynthine channels for gaining an audience of a Very Important Personage. It struck me as trite until I realized that Gogol was writing before any other famous Russian writer, about 50 years before Dostoyevsky if I'm not mistaken. Also, it gave me the idea that if Russian society was so bureacratized and regimented in the 1830s, it's no wonder that Leninist and then Stalinist communism failed so spectacularly. There was never a chance in a society that has historically awarded social status based on whether one was an 8th or 7th level government clerk.

      Gogol's St. Petersburg stories aside, the inclusion of the novela "Taras Bulba" at the end of the collection is masterful. After reading the short, whimsical exercises, I was astounded at the epic scope of the historical fiction of the Ukrainian Cossacks. While still retaining some occasional satiric jabs (whether at the Church, the Motherland, the "barbarians" themselves, or the Poles), and despite his blatant anti-semitism, Gogol nevertheless proves here an incredible range, able to move seamlessly from broad comedy to epic adventure.

      Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by this collection, my introduction to Gogol. I look forward to reading Dead Souls sooner rather than later.
    • 3/5
      The eponymous story in this collection, justly celebrated and turned into a successful stage piece, acts as a wonderful anchor to the book, with its intriguing description of the gradations between normality and lunacy . It is followed by "The nose", also frequently anthologized, which centers around the proto-Kafkaesque premise of a man's search for his runaway nose. After that the stories become pretty average; they concentrate on trenchant criticism of Russian society and bureaucracy of the day, and as such are reminiscent of the stories his contemporaries in France were producing at this time. They are mildly interesting, but rather academic two centuries later, and perhaps rather more to be appreciated than enjoyed.
    • 5/5
      A great collection of short stories. As someone who'd never read Gogol before, I found the first story, the eponymous The Diary of A Madman, to be slightly difficult to get into. The difficulties evaporated about two pages in. This story, along with several others in the book, have a delightful quality of uncanniness to them, as well as being page turners. The eponymous Diary of A Madman, for example, becomes increasingly ridiculous, showcasing Gogol's talent for subtle humour, and then unexpectedly ends with an image of the main character imprisoned in an asylum, overturning the reader's amusement at his delusions entirely and effacing the barrier between the reader and the character that was produced by his madness. The back cover of my edition described Gogol's stories as exemplary of the stupidity, coarseness, and meanness of life. While this may be true of the first four stories, the last and longest, Taras Bulba, is of a very different nature from the rest, coming across as more of an epic than a satire, a sort of ambivalent homage to the Cossack way of life in "cruel" 15th century Russia. While the earlier stories are laced with irony, Taras Bulba comes across more as a naive (not necessarily in a bad way), nostalgic portrait of a people with whom Gogol felt some identification, rather than a distanced, critical disparagement of the pettiness of certain aspects of Russian society.
    • 5/5
      Gogol's stories are fantastic, very visceral but with hefty doses of the supernatural. This collection contains five of his short works - The Diary of a Madman, The Nose, The Carriage, The Overcoat and Taras Bulba.
    • 4/5
      A generally good collection of short stories:Diary of a Madman - hilariously funny at first, but more tragic at the end as the narrator's insanity comes into full force. The Nose - ridiculous, yet somehow charmingly funny. This is usually reckoned to be his short story masterpiece, but I prefer Diary and Overcoat.The Overcoat - another funny story, but with a sad and pathetic endHow Ivan Ivanovich quarelled with Ivan Nikiforovich - some amusing dialogue between two friends who fall out, but otherwise rather tiresome and overlong. Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and his Aunt - mildly amusing but inconsequential