#he was a neurotically religious permavirgin who lived in super patriarchal times - you can't expect too much

[clouds-of-wings]

The charming and funny Gogol, with whom I am entirely enarmoured and whose short stories I keep reading these days, is worse than Pushkin (who was his friend! and got him a job he was 100% unqualified for and which he sucked at so, so much) after all. While Pushkin only roasts his main character for traits which he himself has given him, Gogol goes so far as to intentionally induce behaviour in the reader and then criticize them for it.

"These two servant characters are very unimportant to the story, but this author will describe them anyway in great detail because I unfortunately just really like to go into unimportant detail regarding everything ever, so here goes:"

[Long and off-putting description of the body odour of the first servant character who he SAID was unimportant to the story]

"The SECOND servant character, on the other hand..."

"Ah I think I'll skip the description of the second character since my reader probably has this common character flaw of not being interested in lower class characters. And as an author I really hate when my readers don't pay attention :("

This guy is just messing with the reader for fun smh. First he sets you up not to care about the servants by saying they're not important to the story and gives you an unpleasant description of one, then he calls you classist for not caring. Full quote below. It's from his book "Dead Souls", which is about a former bureaucrat setting up a criminal scheme by buying rural serfs who died recently and haven't been registered as dead yet.

The quote in full - sorry about the formatting, line breaks had not been invented yet in 1842!

In passing, the reader may care to become more fully acquainted with the two serving-men of whom I have spoken. Naturally, they were not persons of much note, but merely what folk call characters of secondary, or even of tertiary, importance. Yet, despite the fact that the springs and the thread of this romance will not DEPEND upon them, but only touch upon them, and occasionally include them, the author has a passion for circumstantiality, and, like the average Russian, such a desire for accuracy as even a German could not rival. To what the reader already knows concerning the personages in hand it is therefore necessary to add that Petrushka usually wore a cast-off brown jacket of a size too large for him, as also that he had (according to the custom of individuals of his calling) a pair of thick lips and a very prominent nose. In temperament he was taciturn rather than loquacious, and he cherished a yearning for self-education. That is to say, he loved to read books, even though their contents came alike to him whether they were books of heroic adventure or mere grammars or liturgical compendia. As I say, he perused every book with an equal amount of attention, and, had he been offered a work on chemistry, would have accepted that also. Not the words which he read, but the mere solace derived from the act of reading, was what especially pleased his mind; even though at any moment there might launch itself from the page some devil-sent word whereof he could make neither head nor tail. For the most part, his task of reading was performed in a recumbent position in the anteroom; which circumstance ended by causing his mattress to become as ragged and as thin as a wafer. In addition to his love of poring over books, he could boast of two habits which constituted two other essential features of his character—namely, a habit of retiring to rest in his clothes (that is to say, in the brown jacket above-mentioned) and a habit of everywhere bearing with him his own peculiar atmosphere, his own peculiar smell—a smell which filled any lodging with such subtlety that he needed but to make up his bed anywhere, even in a room hitherto untenanted, and to drag thither his greatcoat and other impedimenta, for that room at once to assume an air of having been lived in during the past ten years. Nevertheless, though a fastidious, and even an irritable, man, Chichikov would merely frown when his nose caught this smell amid the freshness of the morning, and exclaim with a toss of his head: “The devil only knows what is up with you! Surely you sweat a good deal, do you not? The best thing you can do is to go and take a bath.” To this Petrushka would make no reply, but, approaching, brush in hand, the spot where his master’s coat would be pendent, or starting to arrange one and another article in order, would strive to seem wholly immersed in his work. Yet of what was he thinking as he remained thus silent? Perhaps he was saying to himself: “My master is a good fellow, but for him to keep on saying the same thing forty times over is a little wearisome.” Only God knows and sees all things; wherefore for a mere human being to know what is in the mind of a servant while his master is scolding him is wholly impossible. However, no more need be said about Petrushka. On the other hand, Coachman Selifan—

But here let me remark that I do not like engaging the reader’s attention in connection with persons of a lower class than himself; for experience has taught me that we do not willingly familiarise ourselves with the lower orders—that it is the custom of the average Russian to yearn exclusively for information concerning persons on the higher rungs of the social ladder. In fact, even a bowing acquaintance with a prince or a lord counts, in his eyes, for more than do the most intimate of relations with ordinary folk. For the same reason the author feels apprehensive on his hero’s account, seeing that he has made that hero a mere Collegiate Councillor—a mere person with whom Aulic Councillors might consort, but upon whom persons of the grade of full General would probably bestow one of those glances proper to a man who is cringing at their august feet. Worse still, such persons of the grade of General are likely to treat Chichikov with studied negligence—and to an author studied negligence spells death.

However, in spite of the distressfulness of the foregoing possibilities, it is time that I returned to my hero...

I really like this thing that old Russian novelists do where they pretend the story they just made up is real and they just heard it somewhere. Or they act like they know the people involved in the story and comment on their behaviour. If they don't feel like continuing anymore they just claim it simply isn't known what happened next. I find it so funny. It makes me feel like a small child who is being told a story. I don't know if there's a name for this style of storytelling, but Pushkin and Bulgakov do it and today I read a story by Nikolaj Gogol where some dude's nose runs away and starts a life of its own (strangely reminiscent of the timeless classic Vagina Vacation), and he does it too. He even criticizes his protagonist for some of his less reasonable actions (bro he was in a panic! more important, you made him do it! total victim-blaming), though he doesn't roast him nearly as much as Pushkin roasts Mr. Onegin.