Mr. James’s Reviews > The Overcoat and Other Tales of Good and Evil > Status Update
Mr. James
is on page 46 of 271
Smothered in the green foliage, they [the woods], and the wild flowers, too, crowd together along the margin of the flowering waters and, bending over, gaze into them, never for a moment tiring of the pastime, never for a moment averting their admiring, radiant glances from the stream, and they smile at it and greet it, waving their branches. But they dare not look into the Dnieper midstream [...]. -- NG
— Dec 30, 2025 12:06AM
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Mr. James’s Previous Updates
Mr. James
is on page 161 of 271
The Portrait:
The artist admonishes the student: "Be wary how you render the eyes, a demon lies within."
— Aug 03, 2026 04:18AM
Mr. James
is on page 150 of 271
To each his own: let each man mind his own business. So far as I'm concerned, I prefer a man that tells me frankly that he doesn't know anything about art rather than one who plays the hypocrite and pretends to know what he doesn't know and only succeeds in making trouble and being a damn nuisance generally! -- N.G.
— Aug 02, 2026 03:00PM
Mr. James
is on page 132 of 271
He was in danger of becoming one of those strange human beings one meets in such large numbers in our callous world: human beings who are regarded with horror by men full of life and passion, to whom they seem to be walking coffins with a corpse where their hearts should be. -- N.G.
— Jul 29, 2026 03:06AM
Mr. James
is on page 124 of 271
The painter did not know how to disillusion them, seeing that they were so pleased with being deluded. -- N.G.
— Jul 28, 2026 04:12AM
Mr. James
is on page 120 of 271
"You see, I don't want anything that might suggest she is about to go to a ball or some fashionable party or something of that sort... Our balls, you know, have such a devastating effect on the spirit; so demanding, I mean... They destroy all the remains of our feelings... What I want is simplicity, as much simplicity as possible." -- N.G.
— Jul 28, 2026 02:41AM
Mr. James
is on page 92 of 271
I.F.S. and His Aunt:
She was a woman washing laundry in basins filled with black water; she was a woman cooking for children: comfort, cultural, and seasonal foods; she was a woman plowing with raw hands: cuts on fingertips and bruises on the dorsum of her nose; she was a woman that cared for an angry old man and birds that sang broken. In short, she was a woman without a woman's mercy.
— Apr 10, 2026 09:54AM
Mr. James
is on page 86 of 271
We ought to explain here that the aunt judged a woman's beauty first of all by her eyebrows. -- N.G.
— Apr 10, 2026 06:27AM
Mr. James
is on page 82 of 271
"I'm sorry," he said, "I can't hear a word. I must tell you that I had a cockroach in my left ear. Those damned Russians have thousands of cockroaches in their cottages. The agonies I suffered! No pen, sir, can describe it. And it still tickles. Keeps on tickling. An old woman, you know, did help me once in the most simple way..." -- N.G.
— Apr 10, 2026 06:07AM
Mr. James
is on page 80 of 271
She climbed the pear trees and shook off the pears; she administered beatings to her lazy vassals with her own terrible hand and offered a glass of vodka to the deserving ones with the same terrible hand. Almost at one and the same time she would scold, dye the yarn, run the kitchen, make kvas and honey preserve. She was busy from morning till night and was in time to see to everything. -- N.G.
— Apr 09, 2026 11:06AM
Mr. James
is on page 72 of 271
He was not, as a rule, very fond of reading, and if he happened to look into the fortune-telling book sometimes it was because he liked to find something familiar there, something he had read several times already. So does a city dweller go to his club every day, not in order to hear something new there, but in order to meet those of his cronies with whom he has been accustomed to chat from time immemorial. -- N.G.
— Apr 09, 2026 02:28AM
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Darry
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Dec 30, 2025 06:06PM
@Mr.James, that reads like reportage after the story of Narcissus, like the placement of lost souls along the waters streaming to hell. Is it a quote from the book? What does NG signify?
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Yes, it's a quote from the book. NG stands for Nikolai Gogol; I drop the periods because I'm a rebel like that.
P.S. I think you're onto something.
(Did you get a notification about me using the @ and your nickname?) I would be very interested in the symbolism of getting out of the woods or getting lost in the woods that the story you have taken the quote from signifies. The woods could be the prevalence of social media today, if Nikolai Gogol were alive and writing this in our contemporary period. Streaming is not the only ripple to be made in the looking glass that separates many online from the real and unreal, the truth and the fantasy. A lot is made about zombie culture without understanding the story of Narcissus and what became of him. Dead Internet theory is apt.... So, I am interested in what the story actually alludes to in the section you have taken the quotation from rather than my ignorant but contemporary riff.
@ Dosn't work on Goodreads.The rest of the quote goes as follows, showing that beauty can become unforgiving, where only the chosen are allowed to gaze upon its inner depth; the Dnieper is the river that goes through the town. The quote concludes: "But they dare not look into the Dnieper midstream; none but the sun and the blue sky gaze into it there. Rarely will a bird fly as far as that. Glorious one! There is no river like it in the world." -- NG
(Thanks. Is it possible to tag people on Goodreads?)So the surface beauty is enough for most, but it takes illumination and depth like the sky itself to truly appreciate it. ... Narcissus' undoing was to remain gazing at the surface depth. So, according to that fable, he never really knew himself; he froze before looking deeply in to himself. It seems a parallel to the passage from your reading.