Notes from Underground

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307784643

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-81) was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. His most famous work includes Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. He is considered to be one of Europe's major novelists.

Reviews for Notes from Underground

[stevenjohntait · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing how he can twist and turn a thought from nowhere and make it grow into a full blown psychological drama.

[jakebornheimer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Short and enjoyable. I can't get enough. Feels like a slice from the mind of one of Dostoevsky's more expanded characters, in a good way. It's all been distilled into 130 pages and it really made me think. How is he so darn good at writing melodramatic and insane people? I probably relate a little too much to this guy.

And in there, also a nugget of truth re: philosophy of science "Man is so partial to systems and abstract conclusions that he is ready intentionally to distort the truth, to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, only so as to justify his logic.".

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Shooting from my hip, I'd guess that Notes From The Underground emerged via the tradition of epistolary novels and the recent triumph of Gogol's Diary of a Madman. There is little need here to measure the impact and influence of Dostoevsky's tract. Nearly all of noir fiction is indebted. The monologue as a novella continues to thrive, finding its zenith, perhaps, in the work of Thomas Bernhard.

Notes is a work for the young. Its transgressions can't begin to shock anymore. Its creative instability has to be appreciated for its technical merit. This hardly works on old sods like me. Somehow in this tale of honor lost and self deception I kept thinking of the Arab Spring. Dangerous potentials are unearthed when you cleave away traditions and don't offer realized possibilities.

[johnjgaynard · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

All of Dostoyevsky's novels are works of genius, but, as far as I am concerned, this is the best one of them all.

[solitaryfossil · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My first Dostoyevsky reading, and I really enjoyed it. Soon I'll begin reading his longer works, this was a good introduction.

[judithrs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Notes from the Underground. Fyodor Dostoevsky. 1993. I tried to like this book, but, alas, I didn’t. I know it is a classic and that people far smarter than I am think it is a great novel. It was just an ordeal to get through. If you want to read Dostoevsky, try Crime and Punishment first.

[margaretfield · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

painful articulation of the internal side of a self marginalized person

[justagirlwithabook · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This particular copy of mine has a handful of short stories within it. There are a few pieces that were quite depressing and very fitting as Dostoyevsky works. This was a book that I had to teach to my sophomores when I was teaching 10th grade English and I can't say it had the kids very riveted unfortunately.

[adaorhell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I do not know enough Russian to fully appreciate it, but I know enough. I can feel 'the space under the floor' of the translation. I can see the absence of something there, that I know the Russian would fully explain.

My first Dostoyevsky and I am pleased it was this one. The nauseating, twisting anxiety and self loathing. The violent and unrepentant revulsion, bitterness, cruelty and nastiness, and the thrilling, shuddering language of it all. In it I can hear echoes of everything I love now -- Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury! -- And I see the angels and auroachs and the power of my perversion.

Staggering. Helpful to read certain phrases out loud. Despite being "Notes", it is obviously a piece written to be spoken.

[valerieandbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read this for #1001Books, and did not care too much for this one by Dostoevsky -- Underground Man (unnamed protagonist) does ramble on and on! Perhaps I would have appreciated this more with a different translation. Not long after, I read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and loved it.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Vrijmoedige monoloog van een eigenzinnig, arrogant en wispelturig man. Het eerste deel is absoluut een sleutel tot het hele oeuvre van Dostojevski, het tweede deel doet erg gogoliaans aan. Onderliggende boodschap: de verscheurde moderne mens als gevolg van het wetenschappelijk positivisme.Eerste lectuur toen ik 17 jaar was, onmiddellijk herkend als sleutelroman

[allovertheboard · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A sublimely important book.

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I think this may be the shortest work by a Russian novelist I have ever read. That being said, I don't know that this book is truly a novel so much as it is an extended short story told from the perspective of a Russian man who tends to rabble and who once drove away a woman who might have been able to love him. Overall, I liked the book, although the first part was certainly difficult to get through, the second (which actually relates a story instead of just philosophizing) more than made up for it.

[muddyboy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story of a man that goes through his life and no one seems to notice him. On the few occasions that they do he feels compelled to drive them away with his self loathing.. I think many people do live lives similar to the protagonist here that become reclusive and spiteful and don't realize that many of their problems that bring on themselves. As always with Dostoevsky the writing is beautiful as well as painful to read. An existential nowhere man living a life of terrible insignificance.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A forty year old man introduces himself: "I AM A SICK MAN . . . I am a wicked (nasty) man." This comes from a man who immediately demonstrates his unsureness and his unreliability, as he touts his superstitiousness and refusal to be treated for his (imagined?) sickness. With a few lines of prose Dostoevsky has introduced the reader to a new type of man, one that we will see traces of in characters like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and others in subsequent novels. What do we make of this narrator and his story?It is a story that is bifurcated into two parts that are very different from each other but intimately connected. The narrator is talking to someone. Perhaps it is the reader or perhaps it is himself, but he is passionate as he speaks out from his "corner" bemoaning the fact that he is not even able to become an insect, much as he would like to. The narration, upon first reading, is strange, but it changes when he draws in the reader by observing that he is not the only one who takes pride in his "sickness". Everyone takes pride in their own sickness. Suddenly we have come upon, become part of, the modern condition. This is the world that Nietzsche and others would later describe and that we live in.The first part is entitled "Underground" and it is a world where the certainties of "2+2=4" and the philosophies of rationalism and utilitarianism are not welcome. The narrator, in his hole, cannot act and is overcome with inertia -- being constantly offended by "the laws of nature". What is a man without wants or desires who is living a life that is determined? Reason is not the answer, so he speculates that "two times two is five is sometimes also a most charming little thing". (p 34) He is bored and so he begins to write as the falling snow reminds him of an anecdote that occurred when he was twenty-four years old.Thus the narration changes as the second part, "Apropos of the Wet Snow" begins. The nature of his pathology and his paranoia becomes clear as he reacts with coworkers and meets a young girl. The bifurcation of the story begins to appear in the narrator who, shortly after meeting the girl, starts to have doubts, thoughts like this:"A sullen thought was born in my brain and passed through my whole body like some vile sensation, similar to what one feels on entering an underground cellar, damp and musty. It was somehow unnatural . . . " (p 88) He begins to doubt himself (maybe he always has). The girl tries to reach out to him but he cannot reciprocate. Ultimately he concludes that life lived in books is better than his real life. He does little, is disappointed, and begins to write.This novel is a tragicomedy of ideas, powerful in the sense that it identifies the direction that much of modern thought will pursue. The dramatic expressiveness of the prose betrays a narrator who is bereft of the will to engage in life. It is a form of nihilism that eats away at the narrator. Dostoevsky's answer, not given in this short novel but found in The Brothers Karamazov and elsewhere, is a faith that is absent here. That does not mean that this is not a rich text, filled with ideas and deep with meaning. It is a book that challenges the reader in ways that resonate forward more than a century later.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This guy is batcrap crazy. I don't think I'd ever want him as a friend (though I guarantee I would be his friend, because I seem to attract crazy), but he's certainly amusing to watch/listen to.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Possibly the first existential novel (novella). The unnamed writer, 40 years old, tells us he is writing to no one but argues that man must choose (free will) and will choose not to live by logic and in fact will choose against logic. The second part, gives us the background of the writer and how he ended up underground. Then the very end, we learn that even this has been edited and we the reader do not know what is the truth. Rating 3.43.

[rontyler-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My first Dostoyevsky reading, and I really enjoyed it. Soon I'll begin reading his longer works, this was a good introduction.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Vrijmoedige monoloog van een eigenzinnig, arrogant en wispelturig man. Het eerste deel is absoluut een sleutel tot het hele oeuvre van Dostojevski, het tweede deel doet erg gogoliaans aan. Onderliggende boodschap: de verscheurde moderne mens als gevolg van het wetenschappelijk positivisme.Eerste lectuur toen ik 17 jaar was, onmiddellijk herkend als sleutelroman

[kanikoski · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Yes, this is a classic; it's the sort of book that other people write books about. While Part 1, the more philosophical section, is an intense read with plenty of depth and quotable quotes, Part 2 verges on the burlesque in its tragicomic depiction of a series of events that exemplify, in more tangible form, the nature of 'underground'. While the initial philosophy clearly sets the stage for the pastiche that follows, in some way it might be an easier 'in' to the work of Dostoyevsky to read the two in reverse order. The lack of a reliable narrator figure, in particular, is one literary dimension that a reader new to Dostoyevsky needs to discover, and this can become one of the perversely enjoyable facets of the work: navigating the paradoxically self-aware yet simultaneously unaware nature of the 'underground man'.

[birdo82 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ahead of its time, deeply psychological, and enhanced by a crafty translation, this Dostoevsky novella is a brilliant precursor to the Modernist Age of literature.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An entertaining at times critique of philosophy such as rationalism among others, overall not my cup of tea.

[crypto3willobie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A thoroughly unpleasant book. A boring whiny rant, occasionally pretending to philosophical insight.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This summer, while carrying my edition of the Great short works of Dostoyevsky on holiday, a sly compromise to my partner who forbade me to bring more that two books, I reread Notes from the underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.My first-time reading gave me the immediate sense of dealing with a top piece of literature, but I was nonetheless nonplussed as to the meaning, and before reading the book a second time this summer, I could not remember a single scrap about its contents. This second time round, my understanding and appreciation of the work is greatly enhanced by reading it within the context of several other works by Dostoevsky, all complex and rather depressing.Dostoevsky has this predilection of choosing to focus on characters who a clearly defective in society, as the main character of this novel is clearly a "loser". The first part consists of that type of person's typical self-accusatory ramblings, expressing his misery and self-contempt. The second scene shows him to be a social misfit, rejected, and for good reason, by his former classmates, while in the last scene he reveals himself as a cruel sadist in relation to a girl, who is worse off than he himself.The novel is somewhat difficult to read, because the characters' frame of mind is based on conventions in nineteenth century Petersburg, and not all allusions and references are immediately clear or understandable to the modern, foreign reader. However, the true nature of this anti-hero shines through so clearly, that we cannot mistake the basic meaning of the novel upon close, reading, which may need to be repeated.

[bendv_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'd been really looking forward to reading some of Dostoevsky's works, and I still am to some extent. It's just a shame that my first experience with his work is such a disappointment. Notes from the Underground starts off well, with its rather enthralling first Part, where the bitter, miserable Underground Man rails against certain types of rationalist thinking. He says a lot of rather insightful things; a lot of it wasn't that eye-opening to me, but it was a very good expression of familiar ideas. It's just a shame that in the second half the book becomes such annoying rubbish. Part Two consists of a story in which the Underground Man does nothing except exhibit the sort of stupid misanthropic behaviour and thinking I was guilty of when I was about 14 (though he does many more extreme things). It's not entertaining or even remotely interesting, it's just boring and irritating. I understand Dostoevsky is making a point and doesn't agree with what this guy says, but that doesn't make it an engaging read. I skimmed through the last few chapters because I'd got so angry at this guy and his general uselessness. However, I've heard a few Dostoevsky fans express similar thoughts about this book, so I've not been too discouraged. Might take a while for me to pick up another one of his books though, because this one has left a seriously bad taste.

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Possibly the only book Dostoevsky wrote which leaves me wanting more. I guess that's what happens when you go for 130 pages instead of 800. There's not much to say, except that I really think this isn't over-rated, and I had so many uncomfortable moments of self-recognition that I was scared to think what an a-hole I am. Chilling.

[joririchardson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This small yet deeply written book is a haphazard rant of nonsense, unless you are familiar with philosophy, Russia, and Dostoevsky himself. A friend had once recommended this to me, but he warned me that I should read up on the content before I actually got around to the book. And so began a brief, yet enlightening, exploration of Nikolai Chernyshevsky, and some brushing up on basic philosophy, sociology, and Russian politics in 1860's. I have to say, all of this background work was indeed very helpful. Perhaps not everyone will be willing to put that much effort into reading one book, but I have to say, you will get a much more rich, comprehensive understanding of this unusual book if you do.The book is narrated by an unnamed character, who calls himself the "Underground Man." It doesn't take the reader long to see that our anti-hero is pathetic, contradictory, and extremely irritating. He is insufferably arrogant, believing the world to revolve around himself. He laments all of the woe that has befallen him, but we very quickly see that he gets a certain pleasure out of his suffering, or rather, out of people noticing his suffering. His comments on the moans of a man with a tooth-ache, growing louder and louder and increasingly pitiful so that no one could possibly escape noticing his condition, is a perfect example. The narrator actually believes that everyone has nothing better to do than notice and anguish over his every misfortune. In the second part of the story, the Underground Man is more the focus, instead of his views. He tells us a few stories from his life, which even further bring to life his pathetic, self-centered character. There is a officer who, every day, walks past our main character. Every day, the narrator steps aside to let the officer pass. This is such a very small instance that no one would remember it, or even make any note of it. However, in the narrator's pride, he builds up an entire, involved story about how the officer is slighting him, pretending not to recognize him every day, and thinks day and night about not letting him pass one day. It is built up and built up, until one day, finally, the narrator fails to step aside. The two men bump shoulders, and that is that. Of course, WE know that the officer never even noticed, but the narrator says "But I knew that he was pretending!"Other similar things are when the narrator forces some former friends to invite him to a dinner (where he insults all of them and ruins their night), and where he becomes involved with a woman, whom he falls in love with. We see him destroy any shred of kinship still felt between him and his friends, and we see him destroy all love that the girl may have had for him.This book is a sputtering, mad, crazy rant of anger and misguided thinking, and yet it is also remarkably well structured. In all of its crazy veering off subject, the random allegories, and the contradictions that the narrator voices over and over, Dostoevsky obviously has a purpose and a vision to this work. Although it never left me breathlessly racing through pages, this book did occupy my thoughts for awhile after I read it, and the narrator was interesting in how utterly unlikable he was.If approached with research (or knowledge) and a readiness to look deeper into this book than what is immediately apparent, "Notes from Underground" is worth the read.

[rickstill122 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

" Suppose all man ever does is search for this 2 times 2 is 4; he crosses oceans, he sacrifices his life in the search; but to search it out, actually to find it - by God, he's somehow afraid. For he senses that once he finds it, there will be nothing to search for. Workers at least, when they're done working, get their pay, go to a tavern, then wind up with the police - so it keeps them busy for a week. But still, 2 times 2 is 4 is a most obnoxious thing. 2 times 2 is 4 has a cocky look; it stands across your path, arms akimbo, and spits. I agree that sometimes 2 times 2 is 4 is an excellent thing; but if we're going to start praising everything, then 2 times 2 is 5 is sometimes also a most charming little thing." Dostoyevksy, his mordacity fresh from 4 years stay in a Siberian labor camp, is howling across the vast steppe towards Eastern Philosophy. But alas and alack! Fyodor can't Google the nearest Yoga class, he's only got his pen and his tea. I wish he were alive, I'd love to hear what he'd say to "Mrs.Starbucks" review beneath me, which gives Notes 1 star and comedian Steve Martin's "The Pleasure of My Company" 3 stars. "It's not a good book via structure and moralizing"? Talk about 2 times 2 is 4!!! When Dostoyevsky's coming in, you gotta swing the door wide open!!!!

[poetontheone · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Dostoevsky's novella is part narrative and part manifesto, all awash in anguish. The book is the indelible cornerstone of existential literature, being a violent confrontation with the human condition and the nature of life. There are a number of quotable passages here, and the writing is smooth and digestible in contrast to the narrator. He is not likable, though he is interesting in much the same way as a car crash or the aftermath of disaster, and it is probable that most readers can relate to his bitterness, though maybe not at such extreme levels.

[mrs2starbucks · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I wish I could rate books with question marks...not for lack of understanding, but rather a lack of surety on the part of my own feelings. "a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here" I couldn't agree more. Part I of the book is barely-comprehensible rambling that is absolutely painful to read. Dostoyevsky, or the narrator, has a much stronger gift for storytelling than philosophizing. Even so, let it be said that there isn't anything resembling a structured plot...rather a random sampling of recollections that all end with an inane predictability. By the time you get to Part II (the more narrative section), the narrator's ramblings and actions become so repetitive that it's positively trite. Whatever brilliant passages and lines there are to be found (and there are quite a few), they do nothing to redeem the narrator, mainly out of a sense that if given half the opportunity he would instantly change his mind about whatever he just said. Perhaps we can count that as phenomenal characterization...in the 2 dimensional sense. But as I said, there are some ideas and some passages that are worth taking note of, so I can't call it a total loss. Yet it's not a good book via structure or moralizing...which is why I can hardly bring myself to give it any rating. I don't feel indifferent about it, nor do I feel anything as strong as love or hate. What more can I say? Read it if you dare?