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Martin Cruz Smith

on Russian humorists

Dead Souls

By Nikolai Gogol (1842)

1. It's tempting to call Nikolai Gogol, author of "Dead Souls," the father of Russian satire. It might be more accurate to say, as he did, that "the comic is hidden everywhere, only living in the midst of it, we are not conscious of it." "Dead Souls" is the story of a certain Chichikov, a grifter who ventures into the Russian countryside with a scheme to buy tax credits for dead serfs. With a genius for description Gogol follows this Mr. Nobody, who is "not...