things move around

This week at work I read Dead Souls, which is a novel of two halves, as they say in football. Book I - marvellous - a panoply of fools, gluttons, brutish serfs and mincing barins. Book II - Gogol starts moralising; made bearable by the brief presence of a dog by the name of Yarb.

I don’t think there has ever been a better-named character than Yarb. He doesn’t do much - he’s only there for a scene or two, and he’s just an ordinary Russian sporting dog - but he’s Yarb. A perfect name for a dog, or indeed an internet persona, mad professor, or end of level boss in fighting game. The very fact that he has a name, when he could just as easily be “the dog”, shows that Gogol, for all his lunacy, liked animals.

But not such a good name for a glamour model, priest, or cat.