Gogol

About half-way thru gogol's famous novella The Overcoat - what a very sad story that is. It's part of a genre that I guess is still w us ( maybe more on movies these days eg Office space?) of the misfit at work. The classic example is bartleby and second perhaps notes from underground but the overcoat is the saddest of all and most touching. Gogol slyly begins by saying he won't give any particulars and then goes on to a precise and exact description of the sad yet sweet Akaky - pockmarked balding the butt of jokes and teasing an all he wants to do is keep on as an excellent copy clerk. One day his boss asks him to do some minor changes in a doc and he becomes extremely agitated. But he loves his simple work and has no other passion in life. When the guys tease or jostle him trying to rouse ire or make him mess up he says something like why do you do this to me? This raises in at least one coworker great pity he understands a to be saying aren't we all brothers? (Melville picks up this theme too tho B very different personality from a) story of course centers on a's need for a new coat and the sacrifice he must make to pay for it and his great pride in his new possession and we absolutely know something will go terribly wrong for this sad man but we don't know what. Our hearts ache for him - and we also feel or should feel outrage at a system that would keep workers in such poverty that their entire life is spent struggling for subsistence. The very idea of an overcoat as an object of desire - something he needs and can barely afford and must obsess over - something today maybe like the need for a car beyond one's means? - is both darkly comic and appalling.

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