Finished: Dead Souls (Gogol) What is supposed to be a brilliant, funny piece of Russian literature, satirizing the Russian way of life from the government, to the nobility, to the peasants, just seems kind of like the average, preachy-tangent-going piece of Russian literature to me. I'm not meaning to knock any of the Russian literature I've read, or this book in particular, but I think I'm finally understanding that maybe "you just had to be there" to really get the intricacies of much of the humor of Russian literature. The premise is rather unique. The main character, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, is a man of about middle class stature, yet born of some nobility. He lives the high life and wants to continue living the high life, but doesn't want to at all work for it. He loves the money he has accumulated and comes up with a plan to take his two servants and drive around through unknown country towns getting to know and basically schmoozing the rich landowners and political figures of the towns. Then, he swoops down on these newly acquainted landowners and convinces them to sell him their dead souls. Dead souls are the peasants that they have working for them who have passed away, but are still on their books because peasants remained on the books, with taxes to be paid on them, until the next governmental census was taken. In other words, a peasant could die the year after the census was taken, but remain a live person to the government in terms of taxes, etc., for ten more years! So, Pavel Ivanovich decides he will buy up as many dead souls as he can from as many unsuspecting landowners, and when he's got enough, he will mortgage them to the government (because that was allowed), and then run off with the money! Before he can buy up too many souls, the landowners start comparing notes. The towns get up in arms thinking that Chichikov is some grand swindler, maybe even a wanted outlaw, and he leaves town in the middle of the night with his money and deeds to the dead souls in tact. All the while, Gogol describes in great detail the lives of all the various levels of people involved, and assigns certain characteristics to them that I suppose were meant to really be scathing towards certain Russian people. The next time we catch up with Chichikov, he's moved on to another town and some other rich landowners. This time he's more into seeing how they run their estates and earn money on them. He'd love for a rich estate to just fall into his lap. This is where a chapter or two are missing from the actual manuscript of the book, so there are some big holes. As it turns out, though, Chichikov somehow forges the will for a deceased rich lady in favor of himself. He ends up being thrown into a jail cell by the prince, but there are so many unscrupulous government officials around that they actually come to HIM, willing to release him and let him go for payment. The book ends in the middle of a sentence with the prince admonishing all the government people who work for him. It was a book that started off with promise for me. I wanted to see if Pavel Ivanovich got away with his scheme...but then it deteriorated into the author's statement about Russia in the second half. Oh well! Each book I read is still worth the read. :-) (ok, except for Finnegan's Wake. I will never say that about Finnegan's Wake!)