Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol is our June 2024 Short Story/Novella Read.

This discussion will open on June 1

Beware Short Story Discussions will have Spoilers

I read this one a few months back but I'll save my comments until a few people jump in. I will say that this is an excellent read, if anyone is on the fence about jumping in, and copies of the story can be found for free online.

I can't miss with Gogol, I liked Dead Souls a lot, The Night Before Christmas was superb, and now Overcoat that I couldn't put down. I'm glad it was short otherwise I'd have gotten very little sleep. Simple story about boring official yet it contained some paranormal elements and surprising ending. Commentary about bureaucracy was actually quite similar to what i remember from Dead Souls, Gogol in both stories comments about inefficiencies and absurdities of the bureaucratic system in 19th-century Russia.

Link to free read at Project Gutenberg:
Story is called "The Mantle", but it is the same story:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36238...

Download page:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36238
Yes, in Kindle format too. No need to pay Amazon for the identical book.

A very reader friendly story: We hear that he earns 400 roubles a year and expect to pay 2 roubles for repair – and that already hurts. We are thus fully prepared to fell the shock of 150 roubles for a new cloak.

I loved the details description of how he tried to not wear down his shoe heels in order to save for the cloak.

The "important personage" treatment felt Kafka-ish.

Wikipedia has this take:
Akaky's overcoat allows him to become human instead of a merely bureaucratic tool. A Marxist reading of the text would interpret Akaky's material desire as granting him humanity. [citation needed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ove...

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Link to free read at Project Gutenberg:
Story is called "The Mantle", but it is the same story:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36238...

Download page:
https://www.gutenbe..."


I read "The Mantle" decades ago in a collection published by the Modern Library. I'm not sure if it was a book that belonged to my parents or if I picked it up at a used book store.

I reread it recently as "The Overcoat". This story was a bit mystifying to me at first. I didn't understand the significance of the overcoat. It is one of those hopeless stories about a person in an unhappy job environment - a bureaucratic office setting. The main character is barely escaping poverty at first, but with time his situation declines. This felt almost like the modern genre "magical realism" to me.

I rated it 5*.

Some synchronicity is happening with these group reads. I recently finished Wolf’s “City of Angels or Dr. Freud’s Overcoat” and appreciate the Gogol’s reference. His ghosts are her angels calling forth compassion.

I loved it! Gogol vividly narrates Akaky's excitement over the new cloak, very touching. The ending has a funny twist.

I really enjoyed this read! I liked the way Gogol emphasized such detailed character development especially when it came to Akaky. The details made the main character that much more relatable and authentic. I didn't want to put the book down and I was rooting for the main character to the very end!

I thoroughly enjoyed this short story, Akaky is such a lovely character set in his ways and the coat becomes this adventure for him in his small world. I like the metaphor of the coat allowing him to become human, give him dignity would be another way of putting it, I suppose.

This was a reread for me from my copy of Penguin's Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida which I cannot recommend highly enough. Just found this reviewer who claims that it contains the best English translation of the The Overcoat.

One of the most profound stories I've ever read.

Almost 200 years later, all the characters depicted in this story are still very much present in society today, aren't they? One can easily recognise them:- from the small 'nobody', just minding his own business and wanting to be left alone, to the nameless, but oh so familiar phoney 'significant person'. We know these people! Well, apart from the ghost, off course! I'd forgotten about the supernatural twist at the end.

I read somewhere recently that great literature is where a writer succeeds in holding up a mirror to us and shows us who we really are. This story does that.

And the poor young man would bury his face in his hands, and many times in his life he would shudder to see how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness can lie concealed in refined, cultivated manners...

Having just read Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant, I am having a socio-economic reading of this story. A government clerk works as a professional, but cannot pay bills, does not have enough money to clothe himself adequately against the cold. Part horror story. Part economic commentary. They fit so well together.

Cynda wrote: "Having just read Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant, I am having a socio-economic reading of this story. A gover..."

Agree Cynda. I reread the story today. The details of deprivation that the main character underwent are heart wrenching. Add on top of the financial deprivation the fact that he seems to be OCD or perhaps autistic makes it even more pitiable.

Because I am so focused on the socio-economics, I am seeing the emotional difficulties as being result of the on-going economic situation of the main character as indicated by his assuming/hoping that his overcoat might be mended yet again. The long-term disrespect can be see in the main character's needing to be a haunt.

And yes Lynn. Emotional challenge definitely here, however it came about.

Also this reading of the story I noticed how his death was almost predictable: advanced age, emotional distress, exposure to the cold and long term starvation.