Georgianne Maroon’s essay is a work that can be enjoyed at many levels: as an essay that explores the layers of interpretation within works by Dostoevsky and Gogol; as a meditation on meaning and the limits of authorial control; and as a reflection on the unpredictability of active reading of texts. It also highlights the notion of conversation in the capacious parlor of literature, focusing as it does on works by Gogol and Dostoevsky that in turn address the interplay between writers, texts, and readers. The conversation is made more complicated than usual by Dostoevsky’s weaving of Gogol’s story “The Overcoat” into his work Poor Folk. Here, then, is an indication that the cross-textual borrowings through which post-modernism speaks have equally playful parallels in the literature of the nineteenth century. Maroon’s subject is one that is dear to the heart of writers and teachers and students of writing everywhere: how do we reconcile authorial intent and control with the necessary interaction of readers; or, in other words, how do we communicate?