Notes from Underground in Never too Late to Read Classics

Apr 19, 2019 Yair Ben-Zvi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

This is a blueprint for the type of angry and nervous thinker who finds that their thoughts are in service of nothing save self-destruction.

I can relate.

Backing up a bit, it has been a very long time since I've read Dostoyevsky (way back in 2011/2012 while living in Israel, I managed to get through Crime and Punishment). "The Big D" as one of my best friends referred to him, is anything, anything at all, but easy and pleasant reading. But if he were just a doleful slog then he wouldn't be worth This is a blueprint for the type of angry and nervous thinker who finds that their thoughts are in service of nothing save self-destruction.

I can relate.

Backing up a bit, it has been a very long time since I've read Dostoyevsky (way back in 2011/2012 while living in Israel, I managed to get through Crime and Punishment). "The Big D" as one of my best friends referred to him, is anything, anything at all, but easy and pleasant reading. But if he were just a doleful slog then he wouldn't be worth much. Dostoyevsky was and is a bitter pill for Romanticism and any sort of idealism, he's the anti-idyll, and I love him for it.

Here in this work he lays bare what it is to think to its utmost and, paradoxically, shows the power and impotence of such a way of existence. As opposed to the Wordsworths, the Emersons, even the Goethes to an extent, he shows us that our elevation as a species , be it through ideology, accomplishment, belief, politics, it doesn't mean all or even any of us will escape our own natures.
It's no wonder that the makers of the film Taxi Driver called their movie a spiritual successor as it tells more or less the exact same story within a 1970's era American milieu. The protagonist, the "Underground Man" is indeed an anti-hero akin to Travis Bickle. And it isn't too much that keeps us (or at least me) from hating him..until you realize that every thought the Underground Man has is almost too human to hate, too relatable, too close cutting in their aspersions against himself, humanity, and existence as a whole.

Over the course of this relatively slim story we see the how and the why the Underground Man is what he is and where he winds up. A superficial reading might cast him as worthy of this, his time in an internal and eternal gaol, unwilling and unable because he is unwilling, to join in the Crystal Palace on Earth that so many of the positive set (in their disparate and even adversarial ways) are trying to establish on Earth. But going deeper we see that the Underground Man is every man, every human, save for the eviscerating honesty that puts him, ala Schrodinger's man, in a state of life-death, up and below but certainly not on a par with his fellow man. It's sad, but thinking too much about anything rarely leads to much else.

If Tolstoy was the Russian literary Superman, the big boisterous bastard evidencing life as something beautiful to be taken in and treasured, then Dostoyevsky was the Batman of the same territory. Where Tolstoy saw the beauty of human experience Dostoyevsky saw the shuddering and simpering mass of humanity as a hotbed of feverish passions held back not by noble restraint but bestial fear of pain and reprisal. It's sad stuff, always and again and again, that one of our greatest minds never thought too much of human potential, prefacing Kafka as a writer adumbrating an existential cycle wherein our problems don't get solved with progress but rather are only made bigger, more recondite, and frankly far harder to see let alone address. But we need this. We, as a species, need this.

Truth can be beautiful, but even when it's ugly it's no less integral to what we are and how we plan to better ourselves. If such a thing is even possible. But, oddly, I do think Dostoyevsky does offer something in the way of progression. But unlike Tolstoy or any number of other more 'positively' minded artists, it's a hard won progression gleaned through the grime and blood of pain, and of doubt, and suffering. It's preternaturally Christian, of course, save for the element of this only really being tenable through the crucible of an individual and their experiences, not through the nation, or the group, or even a widespread belief. If bettering ourselves is at all possible it is through the medium of individual suffering and brutal self-honesty. In our age of instant gratification, approved or disapproved group think, identity politics, it's all too easy for those who don't fit to treat themselves as a Steppenwolf, and another easy reading of Notes might easily engender a blank middle school nihilistic hatred of the world.

It isn't easy, but that is only the first step. Dostoyevsky gives us the mirror of who and what we are and what our thoughts truly symbolize. What we as individuals do with what he gives us is up to us, of course. But if only for the raw potential power of the individual and their mind, Dostoyevsky was a champion; if you're brave enough to be honest, this text will sober you and maintain you, buoy you as a single human in a deluge of similar expressions and easy answers.

Much like Steppenwolf, this work and Dostoyevsky isn't for everyone. But they probably should be. ...more

31 likes · Like · see review

Mar 24, 2016 Linda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, classics, russian-writers

You can't help getting drawn into Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground" as you follow the rantings of a spiteful, bitter person. Dostoyevsky has created a character whose every action leads to his own self-destruction, pain and alienation from others. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Dec 18, 2016 Tanja rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2016, 19th-century, classics, philosophy

I read Crime and Punishment in high school and hated it, I read The Brothers Karamazov a few years ago and thought it was a good book, but nothing incredible – so when I picked this up, I wasn’t exactly a big fan of Dostoyevsky. But to my surprise, I actually really enjoyed reading Notes From the Underground..

The narrator of the book is one of the most unlikeable characters in literature – he hates everyone, including himself, he is full of contradictions, he’s the kind of person that I would ha ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Sep 08, 2024 GONZA rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ebk, goodreadsgroups

L'insostenibile pesantezza degli scrittori russi, anzi di questo in particolare, ha colpito ancora. Finito questo libro mi sembrava di aver corso una maratona, con tanto di nausea e sudori freddi. Per caritá ci sono milioni di validissime ragioni per considerarlo un capolavoro, io peró sono contenta di averlo levato dalla lista dei libri da leggere perché non vedevo l'ora di finirlo. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 13, 2021 Janet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Written in 1864, this is known as one of the first existential novels. The political and social environment of Russia created a ripe climate for dissidents. The author's anger was probably additionally fomented during his 4 years in a Siberian prison camp. This fierce anger is present here today, ripe for stoking.

That said, underground man shares with the reader his rambling memoirs full of ranting anger. He is unpopular, bitter, isolated, nasty, spiteful, and miserable. He is horrid to those ar ...more

Like · see review