In Popular Culture
- The protagonist in the 2003 novel The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, is named for Gogol because of the importance that "The Overcoat" had on his father as a young man in Calcutta. The book's Gogol finds meaning in the story, after struggling with the name given to him by his father. In the novel, Gogol's father justifies his choice for his son's name by saying "We all came out of Gogol's Overcoat......One day you will understand..." An adaptation of the novel was produced as a film, The Namesake, in 2006, directed by Mira Nair.
Read more about this topic: The Overcoat
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)