Week 7: Notes from Underground (1864/1918) by Fydor Dostoevsky.

Many apologies for the delay in this review! Winter colds season has finally caught up with me!


The underground man, the nameless narrator of Notes from Underground, is not a nice man to spend a lot of time with. Fortunately, Dostoevsky’s book is rather short (clocking in at around 150 pages). While he isn’t a nice man, he is definitely an interesting man, and his “notes” are well worth reading.

Dostoevsky was very deliberate to let his readers know that the underground man’s opinions were not his own. In a preface he states:

The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course, imaginary. Nevertheless it is clear that such persons as the writer of these notes not only may, but positively must, exist in our society, when we consider the circumstances in the midst of which our society is formed. I have tried to expose to the view of the public more distinctly than is commonly done, one of the characters of the recent past. He is one of the representatives of a generation still living.

Interestingly, this preface has been taken by Bret Easton Ellis and applied to American Psycho, with a similar purpose and completely different results.


There is no plot to Notes from Underground, instead, the reader is addressed directly by the narrator as he reflects upon life from his unique point of view. His self-taught wisdom includes the pronouncement that there is “pleasure in a toothache”, while lamenting a long lost last encounter with “reality” where he attempts to interact with friends at a social function, only to find himself the butt of everyone’s joke.


The narrator leaves, humiliated and meets Liza, a street prostitute. In Liza there is hope of redemption, that this utterly unlikable and uncaring man could have some spark of humanity within him. The narrator is floored by the prospect that Liza’s relationship could see him turn into a “good” man, and seeks instead to sabotage it, driving away Liza and any shred of sympathy his readers may have for him.


The stark and bleak world of the narrator’s Russia makes me want to read more of Dostoevsky’s work. I tried to read The Brothers Karamazov when I was still in High School (only because it was referenced in an episode of The X-Files), but didn’t make it more than 10 pages in.


The tone of anger and apathy are partly explained by the knowledge that Dostoevsky was imprisoned for disagreeing with the dominant political regime in Russia at the time. Although this novel was written after his release, there is no doubt that he himself felt like an underground man, on the fringes of society, with no space for his own views except in the pages of his novels.