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The Double & The Gambler (Everyman's Library, #295)
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The two strikingly original short novels brought together here–in new translations by award-winning translators–were both literary gambles of a sort for Dostoevsky.
The Double, written in Dostoevsky’s youth, was a sharp turn away from the realism of his first novel, Poor Folk. The first real expression of his genius, The Double is a surprising...more
The two strikingly original short novels brought together here–in new translations by award-winning translators–were both literary gambles of a sort for Dostoevsky.
The Double, written in Dostoevsky’s youth, was a sharp turn away from the realism of his first novel, Poor Folk. The first real expression of his genius, The Double is a surprising...more
Hardcover, 336 pages
Published
October 4th 2005
by Everyman's Library
(first published 1846)
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The Gambler was great. Five stars. Exactly what I want from Dostoevsky. The Double was terrible for me. It's been a long time since I've read a novel that was so painful to read and that I got so little out of. I have no idea what happened. All I know is that the style was so painful that I had to use a mantra to get through it. "This is Dostoevsky. There's got to be a point. This is Dostoevsky. There's got to be a point."
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From "The Gambler"
A noir novella about gambling addiction, risk-taking, and magical thinking.
Alexei Ivanovich suffers from unrequited love for Polina, a woman with secrets, one of which involves a desperate need for money. She asks Alexei to play roulette with her money, but he loses it all.
Polina says:
"'....Why I had that notion [that I would win at roulette] I don't understand, but I believed in it. Who knows, maybe I believed because I had ...more
A noir novella about gambling addiction, risk-taking, and magical thinking.
Alexei Ivanovich suffers from unrequited love for Polina, a woman with secrets, one of which involves a desperate need for money. She asks Alexei to play roulette with her money, but he loses it all.
Polina says:
"'....Why I had that notion [that I would win at roulette] I don't understand, but I believed in it. Who knows, maybe I believed because I had ...more
I debated for a bit whether I really should round up and give this 5 stars, but though the ideas in both these short books by Dostoevsky are masterful, his usual artful sloppiness doesn't fully work throughout either of these books. The visionary nature of The Double in how it predates Kafka and yet does so much of what Kafka is noted for, and even The Gambler plays on ideas that would take another century to define mathematically (and give it a fancy name - stochasticity), is all wonderful stu...more
Jeff Landis
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Dostoyevsky fans, Russian literature fans
The Double: I found this short story quite good. I could not put it down after I started it. Picked it up every free minute I had. FD does a great job showing how one goes through the different stages of mental breakdown with unsettling paranoia. The fits that 'our hero' goes through are well described to perfection and at times you don't know if the events are actually happening or the events the narrator describes Galaidkin experiencing are purely imagined. The narrator makes you guess if at t...more
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Line refs from red Everyman edition:
-228: one-upmanship model: "...You've noticed them, of course?" "Oh, yes." "They're not worth noticing..."
-229: 19th c note: "an invitation not to appear in the vauxhall anymore"
-231: Scene change suppressed for dialogue: "At that moment we were approaching our hotel. We had left the cafe long ago, almost without noticing it."
-250: use prose to illuminate gamblers' ...more
-228: one-upmanship model: "...You've noticed them, of course?" "Oh, yes." "They're not worth noticing..."
-229: 19th c note: "an invitation not to appear in the vauxhall anymore"
-231: Scene change suppressed for dialogue: "At that moment we were approaching our hotel. We had left the cafe long ago, almost without noticing it."
-250: use prose to illuminate gamblers' ...more
Two literary works that function simultaneously as feasts and ordeals. Dostoyevsky (with THANK GOD readable translations by Pevear and Volokhonsky) makes you climb near word mountains to disassemble and reassemble his text. It's not that what is going on, at least on the surface, is too complicated to understand, but Dostoyevsky describes everything (read EVERYTHING)in such profound and maddening depth that it can, at times, make reading even one chapter, hell, one damn paragraph a labor.
But unl...more
But unl...more
Seminal, early work and mature work in one--
The Double must be read with the following in mind: it's Dostoevsky's second novel written when he was only twenty-five. The story is a slow, painful read and has none of those Dostoevskian moments of confrontation, emotional outpouring, and human contradictions. The prose is even tedious to the point of being annoying--with certain words and phrases repeated throughout. The main character is a coward and gets on your nerves constantly with h...more
The Double must be read with the following in mind: it's Dostoevsky's second novel written when he was only twenty-five. The story is a slow, painful read and has none of those Dostoevskian moments of confrontation, emotional outpouring, and human contradictions. The prose is even tedious to the point of being annoying--with certain words and phrases repeated throughout. The main character is a coward and gets on your nerves constantly with h...more
The Double is Dostoevsky's most enigmatic work. If you've read Gogol's Petersburg works, it's easy to see the correlation. Unfortunately, D was also heavily influenced by the critical acclaim he received for his first work Poor Folk, when he wrote this – in most opinions his least readable novel.
The "Akaky-type" from Gogol's Overcoat, Goliadkin is an anti-hero that inspires loathing. He makes all the wrong decisions and does so from a desperate and uncommonly low self-este...more
The "Akaky-type" from Gogol's Overcoat, Goliadkin is an anti-hero that inspires loathing. He makes all the wrong decisions and does so from a desperate and uncommonly low self-este...more
I’ve never been a big casino gambler, mostly because the shame and humiliation of losing my hard-earned money has always eclipsed the joy of winning. With few exceptions, I always bellied up the blackjack table with a set amount of money; and if I double that amount, I’ll walk away; if I lose it, I’ll do the same. Deviating from that tack can result in soul-wrenching losses. At the same time, it can generate some miraculous strokes of good fortune. Both fates are described in brilliant, painful ...more
07/29/08: This concerns only The Double as I haven't read The Gambler yet. I read Saramago's The Double about a year ago and was intrigued by his take on doppelgängers, its protagonist wondering how to live his life knowing that he might be a copy of another human. One of my favorite TV shows, Twin Peaks, ends its run with Special Agent Dale Cooper confronting his double in a dark lodge in the forest. Coincidentally, I just ordered a DVD copy of Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veroniqu...more
I particularly liked The Double...I had never read it, and found this early work by Dostoevsky to show a good deal of influence from Gogol. At the same time, the book predicts elements later associated with Kafka (The Trial, in particular).
The tension throughout (as the character is increasingly tormented by the appearance of this person that is just like himself) grows to an almost symphonic climax. And it's brilliant that Dostoevsky leaves the question of whether or not this night...more
The tension throughout (as the character is increasingly tormented by the appearance of this person that is just like himself) grows to an almost symphonic climax. And it's brilliant that Dostoevsky leaves the question of whether or not this night...more
Read these for the Dostoevsky class. I liked the supernatural elements of the Double and it was funny and clever at first, but got progressively more ambiguous and less of a clear narrative so it lost my interest by the end. The Gambler was just forgettable. I would only read it in the context of his other stuff.
I love both of these novellas, though I really adored The Double. I know it's basically a rip-off of Gogol, but...I love Gogol. The Double is hilarious in ways Dostoevsky usually isn't; The Gambler is more "mature".
not dostoevsky's best. the double was his failed attempt at recreating gogol's diary of a madman. the gambler was the result of expending all of his creative energy on crime and punishment earlier in the day (he wrote both books at once).
a few people have told me they haven't been able to make it through crime and punishment because it's too claustrophobic. i've read it twice now and i never had that problem. reading the gambler, however, i experienced this for the first time...more
a few people have told me they haven't been able to make it through crime and punishment because it's too claustrophobic. i've read it twice now and i never had that problem. reading the gambler, however, i experienced this for the first time...more
I was not a fan of The Double. The plot didn't keep my attention (maybe because the author goes into such great detail about the most meaningless things). If the book just contained this story alone I would have given this book a lower score. But fortunately I also have The Gambler. I don't know about the author's other works, so far all i have read between him was these stories and Crime and Punishment, but the whole story was written in the first person. The fact that it was written th...more
Read the Double. For Dostoevsky's 2nd novel (published two weeks after his first, so practically tied for first, as it were), this is a complex treatment of a relatively unknown phenomenon in the 1840s: schizophrenia. I'm not surprised that those on the cutting edge of psychology decades later saw this book as an excellent diagnosis. It is a shame that he never rewrote the work, as he had planned to do. However, upon planning to rewrite the book he actually wrote an entirely different one: N...more
"It's curious and ridiculous how much the gaze of a prudish and painfully chaste man, touched by love, can sometimes express, and that precisely at a moment when the man would, of course, sooner be glad to fall through the earth than say or express anything with a word or a look."
I have been meaning to read "the Russians" for a long time, but it took a push from the book club to get me to do it. I really enjoyed both of these stories. The Double is a story that I wish I had time to reread, because it was so interior and surreal that it was difficult to take everything in on a first reading. That's certainly part of Dostoevsky's point, I'm sure, but it would be really interesting to read it again with a slightly different perspective. The Gambler was significant...more
لم أقرأ سوى المقامر و كانت جميلة جدا
this is the translation of the gambler that is recommended
I only read the Gambler, but it was enough.
I'm split on this book. The Double was so hard to read that I didn't want to come back to it. Pages and pages without a single paragraph break full of elisions and repetitive verbal tics. Though that it's infuriating to read means it's successful.
The Double was frustrating in a different way. The story was easy to follow, but it's the story of a gambling addict and watching him win big only to lose everything that's important in the process is hard to bear.
The Double was frustrating in a different way. The story was easy to follow, but it's the story of a gambling addict and watching him win big only to lose everything that's important in the process is hard to bear.
This was the 100th book I read in 2010, which makes this the first year since I've been keeping records that I've ever gone into treble digits.
The writing is of course good, as is the translation. I didn't adore it, though. I hated the dialogue, and I was thoroughly confused by the story. But that was, of course, the point.
I haven't read this edition of these stories, but these two stories are certainly among Dostoevsky's best. Both are incredibly psychological, although "The Double" is admittedly complicated to read as a story. Dostoevsky's absurb humor permeates these texts, and while you laugh in many parts, other parts leave you contemplating for days on their meaning. Both are a good representation of Dostoevsky at his best, in my opinion.
pair this with the metamorphosis from an existential romp.
This review is for The Double:
I enjoyed this book a little; it's well written but confusing. I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone who's not well versed in Dostoevsky and the literature of his time. I didn't get a lot of what was going on, but I could still appreciate how it was written and how well F.D. developed his character.
I enjoyed this book a little; it's well written but confusing. I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone who's not well versed in Dostoevsky and the literature of his time. I didn't get a lot of what was going on, but I could still appreciate how it was written and how well F.D. developed his character.
In The Double Dostoevsky explores the psychology revolving around a doppelganger and Goliadkin's breakdown. The Gambler highlights the life of a man addicted to gambling. This latter story ultimately depicts the dangers of an addiction overcoming a victim.
All the themes are there, but it cuts too close to Doestoevsky's own life -- an inveterate gambler himself, it seems he wrote this to pay off some of his debts.
The result is an interesting read for the development it shows in Doestoevsky's writing, but not his best.
The result is an interesting read for the development it shows in Doestoevsky's writing, but not his best.
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“Though the sleepy, myopic, and rather bald-pated figure reflected in the mirror was precisely of such insignificant quality as to arrest decidedly no one's exclusive attention at first sight, its owner evidently remained perfectly pleased with all he saw in the mirror.”
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“His position at that moment was like the position of a man standing over a frightful precipice, when the earth breaks away under him, is rocking, shifting, sways for a last time, and falls, drawing him into the abyss, and meanwhile the unfortunate man has neither the strength nor the firmness of spirit to jump back, to take his eyes from the yawning chasm; the abyss draws him, and he finally leaps into it himself, himself hastening the moment of his own perdition.”
—
1 person liked it
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