Book 33 - Fyodor Dostoyevsky "Notes from Underground"
Jul. 19th, 2025 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveFyodor Dostoyevsky "Notes from Underground" (Everyman's Library)
For the first half of the book, the author appears to be on one long rant using the irritable, abrasive, and antisocial main character who rambles on about his philosophy and thoughts on life. Although this unnamed character is an educated and supposedly intelligent man, he comes across as a paranoid loner who despises Russian society.
The second half of the book is composed of the narrator sharing various stories from his life that illustrate how alienated he is from the world. The narrator is quite dislikeable, and I found his bitter and vengeful stories exhausting. I was very happy to reach the end of this book.
Luckily this was a short book of less than 200 pages, although its’ density and unpleasant subject matter made it seem much longer. I made the mistake of choosing a short book in the hopes that this would mean an easier read and I have since read that Notes From Underground is considered one of his most difficult reads. I’m not sure I would have been able to complete the read if it had been in a different format rather than the short installments that I read much as one would take a twice weekly dose of medicine. I’m not here to judge whether this is a great literary achievement, I rather suspect it is, but it is also a difficult read that I had trouble understanding, and I am glad to be done with it.
For the first half of the book, the author appears to be on one long rant using the irritable, abrasive, and antisocial main character who rambles on about his philosophy and thoughts on life. Although this unnamed character is an educated and supposedly intelligent man, he comes across as a paranoid loner who despises Russian society.
The second half of the book is composed of the narrator sharing various stories from his life that illustrate how alienated he is from the world. The narrator is quite dislikeable, and I found his bitter and vengeful stories exhausting. I was very happy to reach the end of this book.
Luckily this was a short book of less than 200 pages, although its’ density and unpleasant subject matter made it seem much longer. I made the mistake of choosing a short book in the hopes that this would mean an easier read and I have since read that Notes From Underground is considered one of his most difficult reads. I’m not sure I would have been able to complete the read if it had been in a different format rather than the short installments that I read much as one would take a twice weekly dose of medicine. I’m not here to judge whether this is a great literary achievement, I rather suspect it is, but it is also a difficult read that I had trouble understanding, and I am glad to be done with it.
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