Nikolai Gogol - The Nose

For a few weeks I read solely short stories, this concluded with what I now consider to be one of my favourite books, Nikolai Gogol's The Nose 

It wasn’t until I read David Foster Wallace’s collection Oblivion that I realized how wonderful short stories can be. His most celebrated, and best, The Depressed Person, showed that shorter stories can be as enjoyable as many longer novels. Upon finishing this I read Lorrie Moore and Miranda July’s attempts, and while they didn’t quite match Foster Wallace’s effort, they were still fascinating.

I would advise reading Miranda July above Moore, if only because I was attracted to the use of experimental perversities that seems to play such a large role in her work. After reading these I came to the realization that I hadn’t read any classic short stories, of which many authors are famous for.

So I read Dubliners, and was instantaneously in awe with James Joyce’s seemingly abundant talents. Honestly, James Joyce might just be literatures monotheistic saviour. I went on to read a collection of Hemingway’s short stories, which included, The Old Man and the Sea, which is arguably a novella rather than a short story, either way it was magnificent.

Then there’s other novella’s that fall under this distorted category (that I would personally term short stories). Some notable examples are Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and John Steinbeck’s The Pearl.

After Reading these brilliant works, I came across a collection of Nikolai Gogol’s short stories, entitled Diary of a Madman, the Government Inspector, & Selected Stories (Left). Amidst a somewhat disappointing start (I thought that Diary of a Madman, the esteemed titular short story, wasn’t very good) I stumbled across a story called The Nose.

The Nose is brilliant, it is as surreal as it is funny, really mindboggling stuff. It follows a respectable man who wakes up one morning and in horror is missing his nose. The man is understandably bemused and apoplectic, and wonders how to escape his predicament. Amidst his wonderings, he sees his nose, in the street, fully formed and of human size. The story follows this man, his thoughts and feelings while he tries to restore his face to its previous nasal normality.

It is a wonderful journey and unexpectedly humorous. Gogol, who was Dostoyevsky’s foremost influence, is an exceptional writer. Dead Souls, his magnum opus, is brilliantly written, however the overwhelmingly sombre undertones does mean, that while it is certainly a magnificent novel, it is quite difficult. The Nose is Dead Soul’s polar opposite, absolutely hysterical and whimsical yet retaining that brilliant Gogolian dialect that makes all his works so fascinating.

It seems that I have been primarily reviewing well know books that I have enjoyed, often without criticising them. And while I would love to break that trend, by being critical, it is perhaps not the time. The Nose is beyond criticism; it is so enjoyable and memorable that it would be a sin against literature not to advise it. It really is superb.