Professor Fanger notes that this book, like the Gippius book, is "one of the most original and least read works on Gogol... As focus for his discussion Slonimsky (sic!) takes an esthetic concept of central importance not only for Gogol but (mutatis mutandis) for Dostoevsky after him -- the concept of the grotesque -- and develops it with an erudition that makes his work a contribution to the theory of the comic as well as to Gogol studies."