Dead Souls

There are 4 posts tagged Dead Souls (this is page 1 of 1).

Killers on tape

I finished up Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol yesterday. Actually, I should say that Dead Souls finished itself. The book really does just stop.

From what I’ve been able to gather about Gogol’s fairly contentious relationship with his book, it appears that it was part of a planned trilogy that would mirror Dante’s Divine Comedy, with the main character going through Hell, Purgatory, and finally Heaven. If that’s the case, then I suppose the part of the book that was finished represents a journey through the Inferno.

That could mean that Dead Souls is less of a realistic representation of life in rural Russia in the 19th century than it is a moral allegory. You could look at all the people the main character meets — the ones from whom he’s trying to buy dead souls — as sinners, or people who have made the choice to live a life that is, by Gogol’s standards, sinful. They are (Chichikov included) greedy, wrathful, prideful, and certainly fraudulent.

The end of the published portion of Dead Souls, which may be (I’m not sure on this at all) the beginning of Chichikov’s journey through Purgatory, does have a shift in tone, as Chichikov meets a well to do landowner who is turning a tidy profit with his estate. Chichikov begins to emulate the man, and it may be that he’s moving away from his fraudulent ways and….into a life of ceaseless toil? I don’t know.

You can’t help but wonder what Gogol’s Russian heaven would have been like. Probably not accurate enough for Gogol’s liking, since people say he burned part of the book because it wasn’t holding up to his religious standards.

Sarah and I have a beautiful Bengal named Jolene. (Here she sits, defiant, after being kindly asked not to sit on my laptop.)

Jolene is a lovely cat. Affectionate, vocal, and blind as a bat. While most cats will choose to sit at windows and look at birds, Jolene always goes in for more tactile experiences. She loves boxes and plastic bags, as well as anything sticky — tape, post-it notes, stickers. She can’t get enough of them.

Last night I left about a foot of scotch tape hanging off the corner of a wall in the kitchen, about two feet up, just above cat height. Before bed, I jiggled it around a bit and Jolene came screaming in. “Tape?” she asked. “Did I just hear tape?”

“You sure did! Now kill it,” I commanded. I didn’t, however, show her exactly where it was.

I mostly did this out of curiosity. Would Jolene be able to find the string of scotch tape? It wouldn’t be easy for her, as blind as she is, but Jolene loves tape and there was a good chance she’d hunt it until she found it. And what would she do if she did?

When I went downstairs to make coffee this morning, I noticed that the tape was gone from the wall. It wasn’t long before Jolene came trotting into the kitchen to place a wadded-up ball of spit-covered plastic at my feet.

“Lose something?” Jolene asked haughtily.

Or, more likely, being a generous provider, Jolene was sharing her kill with me.

She sat near the ball of tape, purring contentedly, and I wondered if I’ve ever truly loved anything as much.

My next book will be #567 on the list, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, which I read once (perhaps?) when I was in elementary school.

I know the generalities of the plot, but I don’t remember very much detail. As I recall, though, there was a film adaptation of London’s White Fang staring Ethan Hawke that came out when I was, what, 10? That prompted me to go down a rabbit hole of boy-in-the-woods books like White Fang, Hatchet, and My Side of the Mountain. I think I tackled The Call of the Wild during that same period.

The Call of the Wild isn’t exactly about a boy in the woods — it’s about a dog in the woods — but it’s the same sort of adventure. I’m excited to see if grabs my attention the way Treasure Island did.

Let’s go, nostalgia!

It’s a little dark

My friend Tony and I went to see Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu last night at the Alamo Drafthouse, which is one of those new-style movie theaters that serves food and drinks and has big, comfy chairs. I had been looking forward to Nosferatu since it was first announced ages ago, mostly because I’ve really enjoyed Eggers’ other movies — particularly The VVitch.

Nosferatu was too…dark. I don’t mean in terms of its story or the inherent violence of a vampire movie, but that the movie tries to build tension with copious use of shadows. When it was over, my friend and I both remarked that somebody could make a cut of the movie that was only the scenes in which you couldn’t see anything, and it would probably amount to 15-20 minutes of video.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with making a vampire movie super-dark, but it’s an artistic shot in the foot for Eggers. Here’s a guy who makes amazing compositions with all of his scenes, and half the time the screen is filled with stuff you can’t see. It’s like if Bob Ross were to paint 1/3 of a picture all black. “Let’s have a happy little shadow, maybe with a happy little eldritch being in there. It’s your world!”

A good movie, though, and one that I’ll watch again when it comes to streaming.

Nikolai Gogol probably would have loved Nosferatu. (Slick transition!) When reading about some of his other works written before Dead Souls, I came across a short story called “The Nose,” which is about a nose that leaves a man’s face and goes off to start a life of its own. There are a few different PDF versions you can find.

Dead Souls doesn’t seem to have any of that same magical realism, but there is something fairly macabre about a man going around the countryside buying dead people. So far, that’s been the entirety of the story. Chichikov (the main character) bounces from estate to estate, meeting a bunch of colorful characters who enter the narrative and disappear just as quickly, never to be heard from again.

What’s impressing me is how funny it is. I rarely expect 100+ year-old novels to be truly humorous, but Dead Souls sure is. I laughed aloud when one of Chichikov’s “business partners” got arrested after blatantly cheating at checkers.

Gogol himself was also a strange bird. From what I understand, he didn’t just not finish Dead Souls, he seemingly burned part of it in a fit of religious fervor. He had a “spiritual awakening” toward the end of his life, became an ascetic, starved himself, and then said, “This book isn’t serving God!” Then he tossed part of his manuscript into the fireplace and promptly died. (Or did he?)

That may be a lot of talk, though. We really don’t know that much about Gogol’s personal life. He never married, was horrible at lectures, and apparently had a fear of being buried alive.

It’s said that, when Gogol was exhumed to be re-buried in a graveyard for fancy people, they found his body lying on its side in the coffin. Is it possible that Gogol was actually still breathing when they put him in the ground?

Or was he, perhaps…Nosferatu!

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

I had a tough time meeting my reading goal yesterday. Being on winter break can really throw me for a loop, and any productive habits I have developed are likely to get tossed out the window in favor of bumbling around the house, eating junk food, and taking frequent naps.

I try not to be too hard on myself about it, but I do feel that midwestern yearning to be busy all the time, which mostly just amounts to my feeling guilty about eating carrot cake in bed at 2 in the afternoon.

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (#378 on the list) has been entertaining so far, but is steeped in the quirks of Russian literature that make it difficult for modern readers to approach. The story follows a guy named “Chichikov” as he travels around the countryside buying up “dead souls.” This might sound like the plot to a bit of bizarre magical realism, but really it’s a satire of Russian bureaucracy. Chichikov, the hero, is running a scam.

In the early/mid 19th century, landowners in Russia also owned the serfs who worked their land. The government would tax the landowners based on how many serfs (“souls”) they owned, but the census that counted those serfs was taken infrequently, and if a serf died during the interim, the government wouldn’t list them as dead until the next census was taken. Thus, it was possible for landowners to be forced to pay taxes on their dead workers.

Chichikov, hoping to make a quick buck, realizes this and goes around asking landowners if they’ll sell him their “dead souls,” or the rights to those serfs who are deceased but still listed on the census. Practically, Chichikov will own nothing, but on paper he’ll have hundreds of serfs.

Landowners are, most frequently, glad to be rid of their “dead souls,” because it means they have to pay fewer taxes. A few, though, try to make Chichikov pay through the nose.

What’s the endgame of this gambit? Well, Chichikov plans to take the deeds he has to these serfs and secure a loan against them, after which he will disappear with the cash. When the bank tries to recoup their losses, they’ll find they now own nothing but a bunch of corpses.

I would be excited to find out if the plan works, but nobody knows how it ends. Nikolai Gogol died before he could finish Dead Souls. The copy I have just sort of…quits in Part 2.

Why did anyone bother to publish an unfinished novel? Gogol was just that popular, I suppose. If anyone found an unfinished work by, say, Charles Dickens after he died, there’s no doubt that they’d publish it, climax or no. And, as a matter of fact, Dickens’ last novel — The Mystery of Edwin Drood — was published in its unfinished state.

I’m not a huge fan of this practice. That is to say, I’d much rather read books that have an ending, but what can you do?

Dead Souls is entertaining so far, and it’s strange to think that people think of this as a “realistic depiction” of life in rural Russia. Some of the characters are so over-the-top it’s hard not to think of them as absurdist.

Georgia for your health

I spent the morning reading a bit more about Robert Louis Stevenson, who, it turns out, moved to Samoa due to chronic health problems. It seems to me that it was a common thing in the past to suggest that people suffering from bronchitis or other respiratory infections were told to go someplace else “for their health.” Not only did Stevenson live in Samoa for his health, he also spent time living in France.

Imagine! Your doctor pulls a thermometer out from under your tongue, looks at it, sighs, and says, “You’d better move to Paris.” He says it “Pair-ee.”

The nineteenth century really was a different world. Seriously, though, when did doctors stop telling people to get some “sea air” or “more sun?” And was that all quackery, or does it actually help sick people to move half-way across the globe? I wish doctors still did that. “You’ve got a cold. Here’s some heroin and a ticket to Hawaii.“

With the healthcare system we have in America, though, your GP would probably tell you to go somewhere shitty, like Texas. Or Georgia.

Now that I’ve finished up Treasure Island, I’ll be switching gears a bit and tackling a seminal work of Russian literature, Dead Souls by Nokolai Gogol.

This is a book that I know next-to-nothing about, and I’m looking forward to “going in blind.” I can already guess that I’m going to get confused by the characters’ names — Russian names all sort-of blend together when I read Russian novels, and this book has been described as “Dickensian,” which means there’s going to be a britzka-load of characters.

Still. Russian literature has always been surprising. When I read The Brothers Karamazov way back in the day, I was amazed at both the humor and the characterization. I’ve always had a bit of a preconception that Russian literature is as dry and bland and a frozen parsnip, but there’s always something that winds up amazing me.

I hope Dead Souls does the same.

Mornings for the past few days have been filled with dense fog and unearthly quiet. The days between Christmas and New Years are a kind of temporal limbo, and I’m afraid its affect the weather patterns.