I think that Pevear, the writer of the foreword, had the same feeling as I stated above although he put it in a much more sophisticated way than my Seinfeld comparison. I am not sure though because his wording was not easy to read. If I had not already read The Nose I don't think I would have understood what he was saying.

Also, just so you know what I am working with, I am copying something I wrote in another post last week. (I had just gone to the book store.)

On a side note, they had The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogal translated by Pevear/Volokhonsky. It is divided into Ukrainian Tales and Petersburg Tales. I already started reading The Nose out of curiosity. It looks like he has an interesting sense of humor.

This really is a short story. I take it you chose some very short ones in hopes that more people would take the bait and read them and get hooked enough to read more of his works?

*Edit* What an odd little story that was. I will force myself to wait a week to comment further on it. Except to say that despite the oddness of the story it is obvious that he knows how to write and he did suprise me and make me laugh out loud once and smile several other times. It indicates that the foreword for Dead Souls wasn't neccessarily hyperbole.