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He is one of those people who never fit in with everyone else, and who feels angry and isolated because of it. Even thinking about this book and browsing through portions of it that I enjoyed makes me want to read it again. I'm glad I stuck with it because the entire second half of the book is told in a more traditional "story-telling" format. Petersburg.
The ironic thing is that the narrator's life is empty and unhappy, and he wouldn't even have Liza if she were to take his advice. We quickly find that this unnamed narrator is cynical and detached. He thinks that he is superior to everyone else, but he is also very insecure. I read this book a couple of years ago, and I'm reviewing it now because I'm giving it away now that I have it on my Kindle. (I always wonder how translators can capture the original tone and language from Russian, which is so different from English). There are such beautiful and true passages in here.
We see the narrator's beef with a former supervisor, we see him at a dinner party with his "friends", and, in my favorite parts of the book, we see him with a prostitute named Liza. At the same time he confides in Liza and uses her selfishly, he also lectures her about why she shouldn't be a prostitute, and how lovely her life could be if she were to leave that lifestyle.
There are long passages on marriage and family which I'm thinking of using for a reading at my upcoming wedding in October. It was an addicting book.The first half of it is mainly the ramblings of a former civil servant who lives in an underground basement-type dwelling in St.
It's so strange to read because his advice seems so helpful and on point, yet, he clearly doesn't take it himself.The best part of the book is definitely the language. He both hates that fact that he feels different from everyone else, and loves it, at the same time.Certain parts of the first half of this book were boring and confusing to me.
But the overall tone was fascinating, and the language just gribbed me. It is excellently translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
I loved this book and want to re-read it and read more by Dostoevsky.For more book reviews and posts of interest to readers and writers, please visit my blog, Voracia: Goddess of Words.
A psychologically fascinating fiction in a fraction of the size of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Enter this man's psyche and examine his philosophy and perception of the world above the ground. Contradictions, self doubt, and wavering between introversion and extroversion make this a thought-provoking read, and an essential existentialist text.
This is the young and idealistic Dostoyevsky, before he was jailed for having `revolutionary ideas' and sentenced to death only to be pardoned moments from being shot. There are three parts to this, but the most interesting is the last: his brief encounter with a prostitute, where he shows the inkling of decency and love towards her, but rejects her when she returns it. Then in the main event, Notes from Underground, the emotion is back, but it has been transformed into anger and hatred in the form of the bitter and isolated narrator. We start with `White Nights', a story of selflessness in which a young man helps a girl connect with her love even though he loves her too. Dostoyevsky is serious stuff.
And through the writings chosen for this collection, we can see the progression of his thoughts and beliefs as he aged. He chances upon a little girl whose mother needs help, but he brushes the girl away. But what makes this edition of one of those great works, Notes from Underground, great is that it is combined with other shorter works from different periods in his life. Obviously this had a great impact on his mind and went a long way towards destroying any hopefulness he had.
There is much existentialist (this work is considered the founding work of existentialism) rambling in the first part, as he debates with us, the reader (even though these are his memoirs, not a two way discussion) about logic and determinism, arguing that man will not always do what's best for himself, as propounded by the utopians of the time, but will often act in direct antagonism towards themselves to display `individualism'. In it, a man decides life is meaningless and wants to commit suicide. Though this story has the grave tone common of 19th century Russian literature, it has a tinge of hopefulness in the man's sacrifice. The transition is seen in the three stories selected from The House of the Dead, his first successful work. In the dream he goes to a utopia where everyone is happy until heteaches them to lie and ruins the society.
Dostoyevsky is Dostoyevsky, and if you care about literature you will read his great works if you haven't already. And, as he is an `individual', he cannot act properly in society, which is why he is now isolated and bitter. Then he gets into a proper narrative in Part II, as he demonstrates his ideas to us with stories from his earlier life. Despite feeling much revulsion for the narrator to this point, there is a sense of poignancy at this end for him, and perhaps reflects both Dostoyevsky's struggle with society after his imprisonment, and our admiration for him despite his nihilistic views.The collection closes with Dream of a Ridiculous Man, a story written just a few years before his death. Almost entirely devoid of emotion, we can see a Dostoyevsky who has gone inward and narrates simply and pragmatically. He awakens a changed man who only wants to love others as himself. Living in a time and a place of brutal oppression, he could do nothing else but write about the serious questions of life.
Near the end of his life, Dostoyevsky had found God. Written in 1862, or about a decade after his imprisonment, these stories tell of senseless murderers and corporal punishers. Life has become a matter of survival, with no room for the sentimentality of the protagonist in `White Nights'. He then goes home, feels guilty, falls asleep, and has a dream.
Another masterpiece by one of my favorite authors of all time. This is so raw, candid, poignant and very very dark portrait of a pathetic man (representing mankind of his time and the future) that is ruled, not by reason but volition (in neutral sense) and hysterics when the truth forces its way through. It is a little bit like listening to George Kastanza (not my intention to insult Dostoyevsky) and classic characters from Philip Roth's novels. I agree with other reviewers that this book works as a good introduction to his later fictions.
(`The more conscious I was, the deeper I sank in the mud.') Therefore, `let's send all this reason to hell.'While a man of heightened consciousness is not a child of nature, the spontaneous man is the real, normal one: `People should be stupid and act', even if world history is a story of `blood being spilled as if it were champagne.'But, we see how these `stupid' men (re)act in `The House of the Dead' with its horrifying scenes of unrestrained violence and brutal murders.With these flagrant contradictions we should perhaps finish with the beginning of `The Dream of a Ridiculous Man: `I'm a ridiculous man. This volume is Dostoyevsky's `Boulevard of Broken Dreams'.It contains the short stories `White Nights' and `The Dream of a Ridiculous Man', excerpts of `The House of the Dead' and the short novel `Notes from Underground'.In the short stories, the dreams of love and paradise (`Love others as you love yourself') are shattered, while in `Notes from Underground' the author attacks head-on reason, only to put his thesis seriously in doubt in the excerpts of `The House of the Dead'.In `Notes from Underground' Dostoyevsky's main character stigmatizes consciousness as man's greatest plague. Now they call me a madman. Reasoning is poisoning, resulting in inertia. 'Consciousness only generates questions, never-ending doubt and torments until man lays on his deathbed.' People who think do nothing. That would be a promotion.'This book, with its excellent afterword by Andrew R. MacAndrew, is a perfect introduction to Dostoyevsky masterpieces like `The Brothers Karamazov' or `Crime and Punishment.'A must read for all lovers of world literature.
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