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    Notes from Underground
    Notes from Underground
    Notes from Underground
    Ebook158 pages2 hours

    Notes from Underground

    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    4/5

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    Dostoevsky’s classic pitting one man against society

    Widely considered to be the first existential novella, Notes from Underground presents the diary of a bitter, misanthropic man. The unnamed narrator has, in an act of supreme defiance, withdrawn from society completely. Formerly a civil servant, this “sick” and “wicked” man suffers from incurable ennui and forsakes all interaction. Rallying against what he perceives as human evils, like war, love, and utopianism, he exiles himself from all humanity in favor of exalted loneliness and suffering. Readers bear witness to the friends, lovers, and crippling social pressures of nineteenth-century Russia that made him this way.

    Notes from Underground, which preceded masterworks including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, is among Dostoevsky’s finest works, melding fiction and philosophy.

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateDec 30, 2014
    ISBN9781504001595
    Author

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. He died in 1881 having written some of the most celebrated works in the history of literature, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov.

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    Reviews for Notes from Underground

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    • 5/5
      Amazing how he can twist and turn a thought from nowhere and make it grow into a full blown psychological drama.
    • 4/5
      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.".
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      All of Dostoyevsky's novels are works of genius, but, as far as I am concerned, this is the best one of them all.
    • 4/5
      My first Dostoyevsky reading, and I really enjoyed it. Soon I'll begin reading his longer works, this was a good introduction.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      painful articulation of the internal side of a self marginalized person
    • 5/5
      Wow, talk about your unreliable narrators. The underground man presages later existential heroes (which probably by definition means antiheroes), but he's not just arguing a case like Meursault, or trying to drown out his own nobler impulses like Yossarian, or clacking his horrible mandibles together and going "LLLOOOOVVVVVEEEEEE SSSSAAAAAMMMMMMSSSSSSSAAAAAAAA" like Gregor Samsa (and, as I've read Nabokov used his lepidopterist skills to establish, never realizing that he had turned into a bug that had wings under its shell and could just buzz off into the sky and let his bug flag fly. But Nabokov also thought Dostoevsky was boring and derivative, so who cares what he thinks?). The underground man is doing all these things, and there's a bushel of straight nihilism in his Notes to boot, but mostly what he's doing is fucking us around. Not leading us down the garden path to cause us to come to the same conclusions about human worthlessness and venality that he has; leading us down the garden path to make us think that's what he's doing, when really he just wants to dick us around. "You despise me, vividly and at length?" he cries? "Well, I gave you that me that you despise. I told you about him. He is a straw man and I gave you the words you used to despise him, to boot, ass."

      He's Ambrose Bierce without the relish, and the only thing that can rescue a narrative from that much self-loathing is a healthy dose of clinical honesty. Which is a big problem for the first half of this book, the "essay". Because one true thing about the UM is that he needs us to know how smart he is (that's part of what ultimately salvages the book from the brink of failure); so he makes sure we know right from the start that he is capable of saying savagely perceptive things in a surgically precise way. But then he wastes that talent--hacking down 19th-century positivism, utopian socialism, enlightened self-interest, other ideas which I'm not going to suggest don't deserve hacking down, or which to portions of Dostoevsky's 1860s audience it might not even have been revelatory to see hacked down, but which to a book as many lightyears ahead of its time as this one is it's a waste of time to even bother with. It's like Gilles Deleuze (who ever would have thought, Deleuzie, when I gave your What is Philosophy two stars in a LibraryThing review in 2007 that you would come to be my go-to example of a forwardthinker for this review less than four years later?) spending time dismantling Descartes instead of nurturing rhizomes; or to take a real example instead of a hypothetical one, it's the was psychology as a profession is so fixated on the ghost of Freud and the shadow he casts over them that every textbook spends time attacking him and thus validating his continued relevance as a pole of debate via the good ol' Oedipus complex (kill your fathers!) instead of letting him be and going about their fMRIs.

      Phew! What I'm saying here is that hacking on the absurdity of the safe little herd beliefs of the herd is boring, and people have always believed stupid shit and who gives a shit, and if it's the beginning of, like, a sociological investigation into the negative effects of said beliefs, or a psychological sketch of how the personality that attacks them with so much rage and yet such palpable self-loathing also comes to be, then fine, but here it's not--or the first half's not. It's just venom, and every time the UM gives us a premise or principle or alludes to a fictional event that might serve for orientation, he then moves the goalposts on us, reminds us that he's fucking us around, and so what good is he then? We're willing to believe for the moment that life is hell, but then he refuses to help us derive meaning from that, even nihilistic meaning/lessness; we want Virgil in Hell and we get the Joker in Arkham.

      The intro to my edition of Notes from Underground states that each section makes the other magnificent. Certainly that's not true of the first. As discussed, I find it on its own to be practically worthless, although exquisitely done; but the melting-snowflake sadness that suffuses the second half, the "story", is nowhere present in the "essay". The "story" makes the essay make sense--the pointless seething spittard that we see in the first half is revealed as someone very lonely and sad, who finally wants to be loved and esteemed but is far too clever and aware of his defense mechanisms to ever be able to dismantle them. You see how Dostoevsky was on his way to religion of a very true and hardheaded sort--on his way to the conviction that the fundamental crisis of human life isn't human corruption or venality or selfishness, but human pain. A totally unlovable man is obsessed with the officer who once moved him dismissively out of the way. He plots his revenge in a way too pathetic to be disguised by all his cleverness (but of course he is still feeding us our material, and the fact that only by presenting his ugliest self can he get us to feel sorry enough for him to love him may well be his last trick on us and himself). It gives him a reason to live, this revenge, for a couple of weeks at least, and he prepares for it like his wedding day. Even as your lip curls in scorn you wince at how he hits the tender places--the piece of each of us that feels fundamentally unloveable and yet like we have to trick someone into loving us as is because we're the only us we've got. The beaver collar was the most devastating detail for me.

      And when he makes his big move it's meaningless, of course, but he pretends it isn't--diffidently, desultorily--as an excuse to keep going. To keep sneering after love. The party scene is excruciating (although it does bring up a sliver of doubt I have about this messy thesis as well, the way it reminds me of a thirteen-year-old nerd's birthday party. Are any adults like this? No, and the UM's got that covered, right at the end when he reminds us that he has presented us with the deliberate collection of all the traits necessary for an antihero. But still--you could argue that he is a psychological representation of all the ugly cravings and tantrums that grown-ups hide away, but I think what grown-ups do is actually much healthier for the most part--they learn to garner love by being loveable, to the degree they can--funny, reliable, affectionate, whatever it is. Anyone gonna argue that fifty-year-olds on average are more selfish than fifteen-year-olds? More spiteful, maybe, with heads fuller of bad memories, but I truly think that we overcome demons, as an aggregate species, faster than new ones are spawned. Moral arithmetic).

      And all the cruelty and pathos of the UM's encounter with Liza at the end, the way he toys with her and drives her away and blames literature for his problems and then himself and then us--it's heartbreaking but also so predictable, down to the big tease-reveal that it was five rubles he pressed into her hand, making her back into a prostitute (called it). The second half of the book is called "Apropos of the Wet Snow", and I'm maybe trying to cut a Petersburg knot by making "the need for love" my keyword for this text in toto (in which case consider this meandering review to represent also my prior attempts to untie it), but what else makes the icy malice and slushy yearning and grey despair so touching instead of repugnant? The first half of Notes without the second half would be pointlessly unpleasant, a slapup of laughable, spiteful, adolescent nonsense; the perfect, tragic-in-the-most-exact-sense second half would, okay, exert somewhat less fascination without the extensive preparation of the first. Fine, Dosty knew what he was doing.

    • 3/5
      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
    • 3/5
      This rating is provisional - I'm going to need some time for this novel to stew before coming to a final decision. I read this as part of a challenge to read cult classics which seemed a good opportunity to read a famous Russian author whose work I have been avoiding since attempting Crime and Punishment as a teenager.

      If you, like myself, are coming to this book knowing little about it, a word of advice - don't let the first part make you quit! I disliked it and found it boringly pretentious; at this point I was sure I was going to hate the book and was tempted to stop. The second part I found much more interesting; although the neurotic narrator was just as pretentious, the overall style was more accessible.
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      I preferred the second half of this one to the first half, which is philosophical rambling more than a story.
    • 5/5
      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'.
    • 5/5
      A terrifying look into one man's confession. The end is more haunting after you have swam through his thoughts at the start of the story.
    • 2/5
      Yeah yeah I know this is "important" or whatever, it's also kind of annoying. But hey, you won't find a bigger fan of "Crime and Punishment" than me.
    • 5/5
      “Notes from Underground” personifies the problems of urban man, an alienated creature who has become “fond of suffering, to the point of passion, in fact”. His estrangement leaves him divorced from the modern world, a world which he loathes and yet paradoxically envies. As his “underground” condition replaces occupations with preoccupations, he becomes the acute spectator of his absent life, tormented by questions, and maddened by the diseases of excessive consciousness and morbid self-awareness.In his numerous emotional vollies, no one and nothing is sacred; his acquantainces, his whore, even his reader are attacked by this utterly detestable protoganist, if one can call him that. This anti-hero is not a figment of Dostoesvky’s poetic imagination or penmanship, but rather an exaggeration of us furtively despondent readers. From this subterranean reality, our nameless anti-hero writes. “Let me out, kind people, to have another try at living in the world!...”
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      There are some truly brilliant moments in the book that took me completely by surprise, and I was always excited when I had the chance to pick it back up to read after having to put it down.
    • 5/5
      I haven't had the energy to attempt Dostoyevsky's more well known works, however this book contained some of the finest writing I've ever read. Admittedly, existentialism has little appeal for me, yet his dry wit and humor were a pleasant surprise, particularly as contained in the second part of the work. I found his encounters with a local police officer and dinner party with old schoolmates some of the funniest, best written material I have ever read. An unusual, but very compelling book, highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      My first Dostoyevsky reading, and I really enjoyed it. Soon I'll begin reading his longer works, this was a good introduction.
    • 5/5
      Notes from Underground is a distinctly Russian novel, it deals with a Russian character facing a Russian problem. I did not notice this my first time reading it, however, because the Underground Man's spite and resentment transcends his particular Russian situation and can be applied to anyone who is out of step with his culture and times. It should be noted, though, that the particular problem that the Underground Man faces is that his view of life is derived from European romantic literature – which of course is literature and not real life. A distinctly Russian problem in that he is trying to lead a Russian life according to the fantasies and emotions of Western European authors (perhaps a modern day analog would be American teenagers who lead their lives with values and fantasies they get from Japanese anime – although somehow that feels insulting to the Underground Man and to European romanticism). He cannot be the man he wishes to be or lead the life he wishes to live because both cannot be found in the real world, certainly not the practical Russian society he rails against.In the first half of the book, the Underground Man rails against both himself and his times. He rails against modern science and the effect that determinism has on free will. He rails against utopianism and the idea that reason and science will one day build a “crystal palace.” He rails against himself for being “too conscious” which leads to a kind of paralysis and both praises and condemns the men of action who, while less aware than him, are productive and able to attain their ends in the world. He is indeed a spiteful man who realizes (or at least perceives) that there is no way to get society and reality to work the way he wants it to, but refusing to reconcile himself to that fact, preferring instead to be spiteful. It is tempting to judge the first half of the book as a work of philosophy, which it is to an extent except that it is a fictional work of philosophy, it exists to give insight into the Underground Man's character not to genuinely critique anything (of course, that's my conclusion. Make your own). In the second half of the book – Apropos of the Wet Snow – the man tries unsuccessfully to live real life according to the rules of romantic fiction. He imagines an epic confrontation between himself and a soldier who has disrespected him, he imagines a duel to the death with an old classmate of his to defend his honor, and he imagines himself saving the soul of a diamond-in-the-rough prostitute. All tropes of romantic literature, and all ending in failure when the Underground Man tries to live them out in real life – particularly his attempts to save the prostitute's soul when she instead becomes the one to help him, leading him to become spiteful toward her. He has grand visions and grand dreams for his life, but he can't get anyone else to play along with him. They go about their lives in a practical way, and he is just left being ridiculous and, at best, a minor irritant.Even though the particulars of the man's situation are Russian, the feelings and attitudes the man has belong to humanity in general. The essential feeling the book deals with is that spite one feels when one knows that things will not go their way, but they refuse to get on board with the rest of society. It's self-destructive, it's senseless, but there's something (I say) noble in preferring to be oneself and miserable than to allow oneself to adopt the prevailing hopes and values in hopes of being united with everyone else. Surely everyone has felt it at one time or another, and for that reason I say that this book has universal appeal. It is also a short read, which lends itself easily to contemplation, re-reading, dissection, and enjoyment. Highly recommended to anyone and everyone.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      A remarkably upsetting book narrated by an awful character
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Typically Dostoyevskian black humour and sense of angst. Themes of the admiribility of conscienceless evil, and free will. His protagonist insists that we do not operate by some calculus of our best interests, and that it is an essential part of being human that we exercise our right not to operate in such a mathematical way.
    • 5/5
      This novella is split into two parts. The first part is an essay where the author goes into a discussion about intellectual people versus normal people. In the second part the author a forty years old government servant, narrates in first person his struggle as a intellectual to fit in the society and the social conventions.Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a master of in your own mind kind of narrative. His characters carry on a conversation with themselves and the reader while in a scene. There is no one else who does the "screwed mind babble " better than Dostoyevsky. A great read for someone who likes that kind of stuff. A 4.5/5 read for me.
    • 5/5
      " 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!!!!
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      "So long live the underground. I already carried the underground in my soul." This best epitomizes Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground.The book is not easy to read let alone to digest. Dostoyevsky again placed some of his favorite arguments in the moth of a character (the 40-year-old underground man) he despised. The underground man self-proclaims to be angry and sick at the very beginning and goes out of his way to offend his readers. The book reads like a delirious man's babbling, in his own shy, wounded, and exorbitant pride. While a novel usually needs a hero, but here Dostoyevsky had purposely collected all the features of an anti-hero: self-contempt, wounded vanity, conceit, and sensitive ego. Even though the underground man might be extremely egotistical and has no respect for others, Dostoyevsky never meant for him to have any surface appeal. The recurring themes of the narrative revolve around the underground man's alienation from society, which he despises, his bitter sarcasm, and the heightened awareness of self-consciousness. He larks to revenge himself for his humiliation by humiliating others. I don't think Dostoyevsky meant for the underground man to be liked and pitied by the readers. In fact, our anti-hero is inevitably targeted for Dostoyevsky's harsh satire. The first part of the book (titled The Underground) introduces the anonymous underground man and his outlook on life. The second part (titled A Story of the Falling Sleet) sees how the man with heightened senses of ego and awareness submerges voluptuously into his underground, motivated by many contradictory impulses. Dostoyevsky paints not only a complex portrait of an anonymous personage who lacks surface appeal, but also a society in which people are so unaccustomed to living and the manners of which that they feel a loathing for real life. Notes from Underground is an egocentric man's monologue that is abound with fascinating nuance which reveals itself only upon close reading.

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    Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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