Rating: 
Summary: Accurate Look into Human Mind
Review: Dostoevsky is a master of psychology in this book. I highly reccomend it, although it may drive you crazy from thinking about it too much.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutly Wonderful
Review: Dostoevsky's man from underground is the epitome of an anti-hero. He is a man we can all relate to, but secretly despise. Though once a leftist himself, Notes from Underground is Dostoevsky's attempt to rebut the ideals of socialism and rational egoism in favor of traditional Russian values. He champions acting on your passions, not out of self-profit, which according to him, is not always what's best. Sometimes going against yourself is what is necessary in the long run. The story is told from the viewpoint of an intelligent, insightful but wicked man, who lives on the fringes of a society that shuns him. He feels out of place, and is not quite sure that he really wants to have a place. He despises the societal norms, as Dostoevsky puts it "the crystal palace." What he really wants is peace, freedom from his conscious and to be needed. The story contains thick political philosophy plus a penetrating view of the human psyche; can be hard to follow at times, but is defiantly worth the read. It is altogether an insightful view of the clashing political ideologies of the late 19th early 20th centuries, one of my personal favorites.
Rating:
Summary: Notes from Underground
Review: Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" is an existential classic. This book, like many of Dostoevsky's works, intertwines the notions of literature and philosophy, probing the depths of aesthetic contemplation through philosophy. Dostoevsky, used this manuscript as a testing or training ground for later ideas he would explore in his groundbreaking and notorious books such as "Crime and Punishment,""Brothers Karamazov," and "the Idiot." Also central to the theme of the writing one will enciounter many notions of autonomy, or freedom of the individual. The main character, "the Underground man," performs many absurd actions, often in spite of his own self. However, this deals with the notion as Sartre later expressed, is it better for the individual to choose for him or herself and be wrongs sometimes or once in a while, then to have others choose for oneself? The protagonist, is continuously struggling, with himself and the existential burden of constructing and being soley responsible for ones own existence, for owns own counciousness. "Notes from Underground" is a magnificent, psychological exploration, into the mind of the individual, free, autonomous and choosing completley for oneself, which is anything but an easy matter.
Rating:
Summary: He is a spiteful man
Review: He is a spiteful man. He is an angry man. He is a man alone in his cellar thinking about himself and the world. He despises everything and everyone most of all himself. He despises himself and spites himself brilliantly. He despises too those perfectionists , socialists utopians who are going to reform the world, and who are deluding themselves and killing others. Yet as he despites spites himself has contempt for himself he wins in some way our respect and even admiration. For his anger and his spite seem to have an integrity and honesty. For in a way we too share his anger at the hypocrisy of the world, at the endless triviality and double- dealing , at the dishonesty which pervades so much public utterance. And in our sympathy with him we too come alive because his voice is so alive in his spite and in his anger. And so he is a great character of literature, and we are his somewhat happy readers- for we too would like to hit on the head with our words all those who have deceived,misled and betrayed us. Even ourselves.
Rating: 
Summary: good quick read
Review: I Enjoyed this book very much. Not as moving as many but not all classic literature has to be... The reviewer who rambled on (with some of the worst english Ive ever read) had not even tapped into what this novel was about. Wish amazon would keep reviews to one paragraph. Someone with that tough a time describing his dislikes probably should be in school and not online.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant insights into psychology and philosophy
Review: I've read Notes from Underground twice--once when I was fairly new to Dostoevsky and Russian literature in general, and once after reading many of his other novels and learning a bit about the intellectual and literary climate of Russia in the 1860s from other sources as well. Both times I was deeply impressed, though for different reasons. On the first reading, Notes was simply a very moving, often disturbing psychological portrait of, as is revealed in the first two sentences, a sick and spiteful man. That Dostoevsky could produce this work over 35 years before Freud's heyday was, and still is, extremely impressive to me. What I did not realize on the first reading was the historical importance of the work. For some time, some Russian liberals had been dreaming of creating a utopian state, and more recently the increasing popularity of nihilism (and in particular the critic Chernyshevsky) had led to hopes that the exact laws of human action could be deduced and a rational utopia set up accordingly. Dostoevsky's underground man is a stinging condemnation of this idea, as his behavior shows that individuals do not naturally act according to the best interests of either society or themselves. Though the novel's merits certainly stand alone, it's worth reading a bit about the historical context in which it was written in order to get a better idea of its impact. A few words about the other works in this edition: Dostoevsky wrote White Nights while in his 20s, before his Siberian exile and while he still held an interest in the Utopian ideas he would later condemn. It's a story of a young man and a young woman, both socially isolated, who happen to meet one night and, over the course of the next three nights, fall in love, with, unsurprisingly, a maudlin ending. The book dragged a bit at first, but I found the second half of it very touching and, though a fairly immature work, it was definitely worth my time. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man was the last short story Dostoevsky wrote, and contains a very clear version of his notion of the necessity of suffering for love and redemption, expressed through a man who dreams of travelling to another planet identical to earth in which suffering doesn't exist. It's not a really great work, but it's a quick and pleasant read. The volume also contains three short excerpts from The House of the Dead (the book based on Dostoevsky's imprisonment)--two of them dealing with prisoners' tales of the murders that got them imprisoned, and one a discussion of corporal punishment. The excerpts are fairly interesting, but if this sort of thing fascinates you you're better off getting the whole work, which is published by Penguin Classics.
Rating:
Summary: find yourself in the Underground Man
Review: Notes from the Underground is to the human psyche what an X-ray is to the human body. It strips away all the pretense, all the makeup, all the masks we are so accustomed to, exposing the bare, raw flesh of humanity.
In the novel, a nameless man attempts to write a truly honest account of himself and of certain events in his life. He is the Underground Man, as I shall call him, an introspective, overly-conscious, pathetic wretch paralyzed by his own too-clever mind. He knows what he is - a 'sick man' - and what he is not - definable. He doesn't fit in to any category; he doesn't belong anywhere.
The Underground Man has one deep, desperate longing: to be loved. Throughout the book he strives to gain acceptance, affirmation, or even acknowledgement as as human being. Instead, he is ignored, unwanted, treated as merely a presence, not a person. He is desperate to find meaning in a world that, frankly, doesn't care.
At first glance, the actions and thoughts of the Underground Man might strike one as odd, irrational, and even sick. Here is a man apart, we think, an absolute freak. But if we dare to look closer, we make a shocking discovery. We are the Underground Man. He is all of us. We all desire to be loved, wanted, accepted. We want somebody to notice us, to value us. The Underground Man merely takes this desire to an extreme that most of us, at least, dare not.
Notes from the Underground is both a mirror and a flashlight: it shows us what we are, and it brings to light all the things we try to keep in the darkness. "There are . . . things," writes the Underground Man, "which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind." Beware: reading Notes from the Underground may bring some of your secrets to light.
Rating:
Summary: A Slime of His Time
Review: The first words of this deeply disturbing, but powerful, novel are "I am a sick man....I am a spiteful man." and these may refer equally to the main character and to the author. Dostoevsky has written an amazing portrait of a loner, whose introverted, sick thoughts spill out on the pages in demented brilliance. The novel is a product of European cynicism, nihilism, and inertia, all of which reached a certain height in the paralyzed upper circles of 19th century Russia. Nobody could write such a book without some personal acquaintance with the mean moods of this anti-hero. The main character, who does nothing except hide from the world, is a total misfit, a loser in life at home, at work, and in love---a jerk, a dweeb, a dork, a geek in modern American parlance---yet through Dostoyevsky's clear prose, we see into his wounded soul. "Actually, I hold no brief for suffering, nor am I arguing for well-being." he writes, "I argue for...my own whim and the assurance of my right to it, if need be." He is apart from society, recognizes no social obligation. He argues that suffering is still better than mere consciousness, because it sharpens the awareness of your being, therefore suffering is in man's interest Someone who can argue that is not going to write an average novel. This is in fact not an average novel at all, but a book concerned with the play of ideas, ideas that flash around like comets and meteorites inside Dostoevsky's head. It can no more escape Dostoevsky's brain than a Woody Allen movie can escape Woody Allen. The plot line of NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND is extremely slim. It concerns an underground man, a man like a rat or a bug, who lives outside, or more likely, underneath the world's gaze. It is a lonely, tortured life lived inside a single skull with almost no contacts with the rest of the world except for a vicious servant. The "action" of the book comes only when the protagonist worms his way into a dinner with former schoolmates. They don't want him, he despises all of them. So, as you can imagine, a good time is had by all. The underground man winds up in a brothel with an innocent, hapless prostitute named Liza. He wishes for some relationship, he immediately abhors the very thought of contact with another person. The result is worse than you can predict, though I will say that it involves "the beneficial nature of insults and hatred". In the tradition of novels of introspective self-hatred, Dostoevsky's has to be one of the first. I wondered as I read how much Kafka owed him, for after all, the hero here is a cockroach too, only remaining in human form. I realized how much Dostoevsky had influenced the Japanese writers of the 20th century---Tanizaki, Mishima, Soseki, Kawabata, and others. The pages are brilliant, but full of vile stupidity, useless, arid intellectualism, hatred of one's best and love of one's worst qualities, withdrawal from life, and self-loathing. A less American novel would be hard to imagine. But, some of these characteristics are found in almost everyone at some point in their life, unpleasant as that realization may be. I have to give NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND five stars, though I can't say I enjoyed it. It is simply one of the most impressive novels ever written.
Rating:
Summary: Major misanthropy
Review: The lonely and desolate protagonist has long been a target of authors. IN Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky births the landmark and premier loner novella. Dostoyevsky starts the literary franchise off with a bang. Often, an author will use a lack of a particular aspect of fiction to develop that same aspect. For instance, in Samuel Beckett's play, "Waiting for Godot," the characters literally sit around and wait for an enigmatic man named Godot. Godot never appears, but his coming paralyzes the play's plot but simultaneously drives it. In Notes from Underground, the same device is used in the character realm. The stark stratum of characters is dotted mainly by the narrator who goes unnamed and anonymous. Very little details are revealed to the audience, yet the inner-most ramblings and misanthropic threads are spilled all over the pages. The narrator sees people only as small insignificant ants and develops little to no discernable characters. This very idea fuels Dostoyevsky's existential philosophy and psychological point. He uses humor as a cruel device to lash out at the same world that has left him a withered old misanthrope. The novella is formed by its clear lack of development and simplistic view of life. Woody Allen once summarized in a joke: "Life is miserable, painful, irrational, tortuous and over much too quickly. Dostoyevsky's story served as a cultural magnet, inspiring such followers in both film and literature like Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese.
Rating:
Summary: Not existentialism
Review: The person who last reviewed this book somehow developed a completly false perception of this book. If they knew anything about Dostoevsky, they would know that he was Catholic. If they read the intro or even just the quote from Dostoevsky at the bottom of the first page they would know that he was parodying this type of existenialist philosophy and this type of person. Anyway, this is a really good, quick read. Of course, its not on the level of his greater works, but definatly worth while.
|
