Are These E-Mails From My Boss? Or Lines From A Famous Russian Novel?

By

My boss, Mike, is currently on holiday, in Istanbul.

We’ve been e-mailing.

Some of the words below are his.

Some are lines from the nineteenth centry-novel Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol.

Can you tell who wrote what?

Good luck.

  1. The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors.
  2. I just heard a foghorn. Childhood once more.
  3. How can you vegetate in the country?
  4. I see the sources of your face among the many facing me.
  5. So many greens! A mad green palate: from the water, to the hills, and to the sky.
  6. True, the doorway may be blocked up with a wardrobe.
  7. You can’t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.
  8. Hot, cranky, annoyed, and ready for an afternoon nap.
  9. I love this city; its neighborhoods, places of my childhood and youth, of small, even tiny, shops with exhausted fathers feeding their at-home family, needing a shave and bath, working into the night for a few more shekels.
  10. He had nothing to him except his bushy eyebrows.
  11. My mother would be so happy: her eldest son may yet amount to something!
  12. The salads in their texture, color, and taste, begin and close my days.
  13. An early walk showed the city imprisoned by its protective grates, hiding its personalities.
  14. Keep not money, but keep good people’s company.
  15. I have said twenty times already: ‘Don’t bring any more!’ I have so much material already, that I don’t know where to put it.
  16. I turned down the tea, but did drink two small bottles of water.

Scroll down for the answers!

Gogol: 1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15

Mike: 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16

Thank you for sharing/recommending this. Mike approves (He’s 75. And still on vacation. Hi Mike!).