The sly, subversive side of the nineteenth-century Russian literary character -- the one which represents such a contrast to the titanic exertions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky -- was most fully realized in Ivan Goncharov's 1859 masterpiece, Oblomov. This magnificent farce about a gentleman who spends the better part of his life in bed is a reminder of the extent to which humor, in the hands of a comic genius, can be used to explore the absurdities and injustices of a social order. Goncharov's gentle satire on the failings of 19th-century Russian gentry and bureaucracy turns into something deeper and richer than satire, as he probes the character of a protagonist whose constitutional lethargy becomes a symbol for the malaise of the human spirit in an alienating world. (Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)