Notes from Underground (1864) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I swear to you, gentlemen, there is not one thing, not one word of what I have written that I really believe. That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at the same time I feel and suspect that I am lying like a cobbler.

Once upon a time, one thousand years ago when I was in college, I sat on the bed studying as my girlfriend read Crime and Punishment beside me. She was really smart. Probably she still is. I wouldn’t know. Anyway, she’d break periodically only to take a note or two while cursing under her breath in complaint to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. She was clearly frustrated by the density of his work. I commented something, probably in passive-aggressive annoyance at her for disturbing my own studies, which led her to hint quite condescendingly that I (a history major and reading comparably brain-lite, if dry, material) would never be able to finish a book on the level of Crime and Punishment because it was too dense and too philosophical for a mouth-breather me. I, of course, took offense to this, and, bothered by the challenge, bought a copy for myself.

And would you believe it? She was right. I put down Crime and Punishment within the week. I think I only made it about a hundred pages before giving up.

I’ve tried to read Dostoyevsky three times in my life.

The first attempt was the aforementioned impotent, doomed salvo I launched back in what must have been 2004 or 2005, when the ideas Dostoyevsky bowled me over pretty much right off the bat. I was so ill-equipped to read him I wasn’t even familiar with the philosophies he was examining and the established theories and schools of thought he was challenging, much less able to think critically about the way he was doing so and draw my own conclusions including the consideration of his work.

I tried again five or six years after that, when I attempted The Brothers Karamazov after hearing it was the greatest, most fantastic novel ever written on Reddit or some damned place. I failed again. At this time I considered myself a pretty intelligent fellow (I’ve now read far too much and spoken with far too many actually smart people to still believe that), so I felt obligated after two such embarrassing failures to provide a reason to myself to try and save face, so I blamed the translations for being too stuffy (Constance Garnett) or having weird syntax (Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky). I’ve now come around to the fact that it was I who was the problem. My education never prepared me for the onslaught of existential ideas that Dostoyevsky would state with one sentence and knock to pieces with the next. Forget his density; I couldn’t even handle his subject matter. Reading Dostoyevsky in these two attempts was like an illiterate man looking at a dinner menu. After enough studious concentration I could probably sound out the words to the point that I could maybe get an idea of what I was looking at, but I wasn’t really sure enough of what it was saying to order a meal I knew I’d enjoy. So instead of winging it and potentially embarrassing myself, I’d just put down the menu and leave and go home and make a PB&J sandwich and cut the crusts off.

I tell you this all, gentlemen, mostly because I’m elated that Dostoyevsky has finally clicked with me on this third try and I’m exceedingly proud of that fact, as you can probably already tell from my tone.

It did take a hell of an adjustment period, though. I think I read the first few pages of Notes from the Underground more than four times over the past few weeks before finally picking it up and pushing through. Initially it felt the same as every other time I’d picked up Dostoyevsky before and I genuinely wondered (maybe for the first time) if I simply lacked the baseline level of intelligence to read him and find him enjoyable. The more I read, though, the closer I felt like I was coming to a point of it ‘clicking’ with me, until I finally did.

“Oh shit, I’m actually getting this! It’s working, it’s working! It’s a Unix system, I know this!”

Eureka!

In Notes from Underground Dostoyevsky has a way of challenging your worldview, but doing so in a way that feels honest—or at least honestly crafted—and in a narrative voice which, in this case, is wholly unique from probably any I’ve ever read before. Without the Underground Man’s voice it would probably be too dry to dig through, and without all of the substance he’s saying, it would naturally seem more hokey and less realistic. There’s something extremely compelling about the bitter, anarchic, nihilistic existential tirade of an extremely intelligent but seemingly unhinged, contradictory, masochistic man, and trying to counter that with your own thoughts, backed up by your own personal philosophy—all within your own head during a 20 second break of actually reading it.

I found reading Notes to be a stimulating mental exercise, but reading it in this fashion is absolutely exhausting, and I needed plenty of space to consider what he was saying and my reaction to it: What might be right or wrong about these notions? Is there any value to this statement, or can dismiss it outright? And—perhaps more interestingly—what kind of a person (or in this case, the character) must someone be to believe this? The final question making this one of the best books I’ve read.

This is a story with one character (well, there are more, but really, it's just Underground Man) in which very little happens. I’m not studied enough on the author to say whether or not the narrator is actually expressing Dostoyevsky’s own thoughts and beliefs. It’s certainly more impressive if he’s not, and Dostoyevsky has created this character and this character’s mental process from scratch. I assume that to be true, and thus I believe this to be one of the most unique, compelling fictional characters I’ve ever read. It’s a timeless character as well; a genuine, honest representation of a social malcontent; a pariah. The Underground Man will probably always feel relevant to anyone who reads him so long as they reside in civilized human society, because every civilized human society in recorded history has had its outcasts. It grew more and more obvious to me as I continued reading that I knew this guy, and of course I did. You do, too. He's every YouTube poop creator, every well-spoken Twitter troll, every 4chan commenter, every Reddit incel. He will always exist; we will all always know him until such a time as our consciousnesses are uploaded into vast computers and we transcend our humanity. And even then there will probably be computers floating off on the edges of populated space transmitting the same shit Underground Man is. Modern technology has only given Underground Men (and women, I suppose) a megaphone with which to soapbox, making this novel perhaps more relevant now than it was even at the time of its publishing.

As detestable as Underground Man can be, I can’t say enough about what he’s made me aware of within myself. I'm a reader, at times a loner, and even, when darker moods strike, similarly bitter and misanthropic. So Underground Man has also challenged me; he's caused me to more closely examine and regulate the way I view and treat others so I don't someday turn into him. I think everybody reading this novel can relate to him on some level, and that's the brilliance of it.

Of course, reading the scribbling of a social invalid who has isolated himself to revel in the disgust and mockery of society and humanity for decades isn’t always going to be an enjoyable pursuit, and it did take me a while to get through Notes even though its length puts it closer to a novella than a full novel. I can’t speak for Dostoyevsky’s other work (as we’ve already covered in probably too much detail), but Notes from the Underground is definitely not for everyone. This book is extremely introspective. It’s all about ideas, and human existence, and not much about anything that physically happens within its pages. And that’s going to be pretty polarizing. A lot of people aren’t into fiction for that reason. They want plot action and character interaction. So Notes from the Underground is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s totally fine—It’s completely valid to dislike this and it doesn’t (necessarily) mean you’re as dumb as I was (am?) when I first tried reading him.

So what changed, then? Why was I able to read this now?

The shortest answer is that I don’t really know. I haven’t continued my education through any official means. But throughout the past few years I’ve embarked on a quest in my spare time to try and enrich my mind by learning basic economics, philosophy, and ethics, in addition to continuing my self-education in history and reading as much classic literature as possible. Perhaps these pursuits slowly but surely imparted on me the basis of knowledge I required in order to read Dostoyevsky and actually enjoy reading Dostoyevsky. Or maybe I just wanted it more this time, like they say about sportsmen playing in some Extremely Important Sports Competition, like the Superbowl or the World Cup.

I look forward to attempting Crime and Punishment again very soon, and—this time—finishing the bastard and actually getting something out of it.

Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear

You know, writing this thing up again has really made me think. When it comes down to it I guess you could say that a condescending offhand remark by an ex-girlfriend 15 years ago led me to devote years of painstaking study into improving my own intellect to the point where I could read a Dostoyevsky book and find almost half of it enjoyable. I am a sick man, I am a spiteful man. But above all, I am a truly insecure man.

In my defense, though, I still really hate reading Constance Garnett and Pevear & Volokhonsky. With a passion.
So surely my initial assumption was correct and it was their fault all along.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

NOTABLE HIGHLIGHTS

In any case civilization has made mankind if not more blood-thirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely blood-thirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves.

The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.

“What is to be done with millions of facts that bear witness that men, CONSCIOUSLY, that is fully understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, willfully, struck out another difficult absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness.

In every man’s memories there are such things as he will reveal not to everyone, but perhaps only to friends. There are also such as he will reveal not even to friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. Then, finally, there are such as a man is afraid to reveal even to himself, and every decent man will have accumulated quite a few things of this sort.

We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage.

Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else… Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child!