Gogol's Dead Souls is a great favorite of mine, read over 30 years ago, but I hadn't gotten around to reading any of his other productions until prompted by Lahiri's interesting The Namesake. The Overcoat couldn't help but remind me of Melville's Bartleby, because of the similarity in occupation of the main protagonists: copying documents all day long. Surely the Xerox machine has robbed us moderns of much superb comedy! However Gogol goes beyond satire to protest the injustice of the system and society of his day that has resonance even now over 150 years later. And he beat Melville to the punch(line) by several years! Turning his protest into a ghost story at the end fits well with the chill of St.Petersburg winters so memorably evoked by Gogol's masterful prose.