Death by Hot Air

Abstract

Tolstoi gives us the structure of death and lets us all know that we are dying and that substituting the pursuit of objects or money for the processes of living is futile and meaningless. Joyce gives us death by snow, Gabriel’s supercilious coldness curbing his perceptive abilities to see himself for the pompous, sycophantish prig he is. Gogol offers death by superficiality (super-officiality?), by self-images based on titles, rank, and less-than-humane behavior. And finally, Tomasso Landolfi in “Gogol’s Wife” gives us death by hot air, and the air is our blowhard own as the narrator in his careful honesty describes the absurdity of Gogol’s wife being a balloon and, not unlike Tolstoi’s making us think of Ivan as alive while all the time dead, and treats Caracas (and possibly her infant) as though she has feelings, emotions, and attitudes.¹