Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories (B&N Classics) [Mass Market Paperback]

Fyodor Dostoevsky (Author), Constance Garnett (Translator), Deborah A. Martinsen (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1593080379 | ISBN-13: 978-1593080372 | Publication Date: September 1, 2003

Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

• New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
• Footnotes and endnotes
• Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
• Comments by other famous authors
• Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
• Bibliographies for further reading
• Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Often considered a prologue to Dostoevsky’s brilliant novels, the story “Notes from Underground” introduces one of the great anti-heroes in literature: the underground man, who lives on the fringes of society. In an impassioned, manic monologue this character—plagued by shame, guilt, and alienation—argues that reason is merely a flimsy construction built upon humanity’s essentially irrational core. Internal conflict is also explored in “The Double,” a surreal tale of a government clerk who meets a more unpleasant version of himself and is changed as a result.

In addition to these two existential classics, this collection also includes the psychologically probing stories “The Meek One,” “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” and “White Nights.”

Deborah A. Martinsen is Assistant to the Director of the Core Curriculum at Columbia University and Adjunct Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature. She is the author of Surprised by Shame: Dostoevsky's Liars and Narrative Exposure.

Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Deborah A. Martinsen's Introduction to Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories

 

Master psychologist, social critic, and metaphysical thinker, Dostoevsky continually surprises readers with his dramatic and penetrating insights into the human mind and heart. The stories collected in this volume span most of Dostoevsky’s career, yet their protagonists are similar—all of them solitary men living in St. Petersburg, Russia’s capital from 1712 to 1917. St. Petersburg was Tsar Peter the Great’s planned city, his “window on the West.” Yet Peter achieved his vision at great human cost. Located on hostile swampland, this “Venice of the North” was built on the bones of the laborers who hauled granite to shore its riverbanks and canals. Popular rumors of Peter as Antichrist warred with the official version of Peter as world builder and gave rise to a myth of duality that came to surround the city as well as the tsar.

 

By the mid-nineteenth century, when Dostoevsky began his writing career, Aleksandr Pushkin and Nikolay Gogol had already immortalized St. Petersburg’s duality in verse and prose. In Pushkin’s narrative poem The Bronze Horseman (1833), a devastating flood symbolizes the revolt of the elements against the city and its inhabitants. The flood serves as a backdrop for the conflict between the impersonal, imperial state and a humble individual who loses everything, including his mind, as a result of the natural disaster. Gogol’s St. Petersburg tales focus more on the city as Russia’s administrative and social capital and highlight the disjunction between its attractive appearance and its cruel realities. Dostoevsky evokes his predecessors’ contributions to the myth and provides additional psychological and philosophical depth. St. Petersburg, in the words of the underground man in “Notes from Underground,” “is the most abstract and premeditated city on the whole earth.” In the tradition of Dickens and Balzac before him, Dostoevsky makes his city emblematic of Western urban civilization and also of Russia’s self-consciousness vis-à-vis the West.

 

The protagonists of these collected stories are all St. Petersburg loners whose isolation marks their alienation from human community and what Dostoevsky called “living life.” They are narcissists who suffer from shame and feel excluded from communities to which they long to belong. They feel inadequate and out of place. They fear rejection or failure, and choose isolation as a defense against their fears. In “The Double,” Golyadkin, whose name derives from the Russian word for “naked” or “insignificant,” voices shame at his very identity: “What a little fool you are, what a nonentity [Golyadka]—that’s the kind of last name you have!” The St. Petersburg dreamer calls himself a “type . . . an original . . . a ridiculous man!” The underground man calls himself “sick,” “spiteful,” “unattractive.” The pawnbroker refuses to defend his regiment’s honor for fear of appearing “stupid.” The dreamer of the final story in this collection calls himself “ridiculous.”

 

By exposing his protagonists’ deep sense of personal shame, Dostoevsky gives readers a key to understanding their stories. We see that their solitude is their major defense, but not their only one. They also protect their fragile egos by objectifying themselves, dreaming, rationalizing, dominating others, and adopting a shell of numbing indifference. In deploying these standard defenses against shame, they become not only realistic, nineteenth-century St. Petersburg “types” but also our contemporaries.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics (September 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593080379
• ISBN-13: 978-1593080372
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #104,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A goldmine for the Dostoyevsky reader, September 23, 2003

By 

Bill R. Moore (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories (B&N Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

This great paperback omnibus collects Fyodor Dostoyevsky's two most famous short novels, Notes From the Underground and The Double, as well as three short stories: White Nights, The Meek One, and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. All five are essential reads for fans of the great Russian author. This book also serves as a good starting point for the neophyte who is just looking to jump into Dostoyevsky: it contains an array of short works that serve to introduce the unfamiliar reader to the author's writing style. This is very valuable, because, after all, one would not be wise to jump into the author's immense novels unprepared. All of these stories introduce themes that Dostoyevsky would develop more fully in his great novels -- suicide, madness, nihilism, the existence of God. The author always was one to deal with life's Big Things, and he does not hesitate to do so even in his shorter works. All of the stories exhibit the vivid psychological realism that was Dostoyevsky's trademark. Never one for beautiful prose, Dostoyevsky much preferred to get down and dirty with the inner working of the human mind, never afraid to back away from all of the dark and terrible things that he found there.

Notes From the Underground, one of the greatest short novels of all-time, portrays one man in the depths of despair. A vivid depiction of the dark side of human nature, Notes is a great classic that perfectly evokes the feelings of isolation, despair, narcissism, and paranoia that continue to afflict the mass of men. The Double is another interesting story. Though an early work and not as well-crafted, it manages to put a new spin on the doppelganger phenomenon. In it, Dostoyevsky very skillfully portrays one man's lonely descent into madness -- and manages to be screamingly funny while doing so. White Nights is a brilliant short work, beautifully written, a testament to the eternal, if occasionally capricious, nature of love. The Meek One is a very dark story that examines the roots of suicide. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man offers a unique take on the nature of evil.

I should take time out here to note how wonderful these Barnes & Noble Classics Editions are. They offer a wide range of supplementary materials to the readings, of interest to both the general reader and the Dostoyevsky reader, not to mention the literary scholar. These include: a short profile of the author, a timeline of his life, a substantial critical introduction, effective but not overlong notes, an offering of critical opinion and commentary on the text, and even a list of discussion questions. Not least of all, they are extremely affordable. I highly recommend this volume to anyone looking to get into the author, and also to dedicated fans looking to have all of these stories in one place.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Deeply inciteful into the human conscious and a great sampling of this author, July 14, 2005

By 

fra7299 "fra7299" (California, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories (B&N Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

What makes this a promising edition is the notes and introduction, in addition to the great stories by Russian writer Dosteovsky. Dubbed a writer whose works include the element of socialism and psychology, this handy book is a great sampling of some of his shorter stories and novellas.

Psychological and symbolic in nature, one of the stories, "The Double" is the story of a man who literally believes that he has a double, a man who looks like him and bears the same name of Golyadkin. Therefore, our protagonist becomes Golyadkin senior, and the antagonist, the "malevolent" side of the twin, is Golyadkin junior. Golyadkin becomes aware that this twin of his is methodically ruining his life by scarring his reputation with peers and making his own name become synonymous with shame. The story itself is a study in duality and shame of individuals-Golyadkin senior becomes obsessed with correcting all the wrongs that his lower twin creates and tries to become the highly thought of individual that he once was. His downfall, and lowering place in society, is as much physical to him as it is metaphorical to us the readers. While the story takes a little patience to begin to appreciate and understand, the overall impact is impressive.

Also included within this edition are other stories from Dostoevsky, such as "Notes from Underground", "White Nights", "The Meek One", and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man." Also included is both a brief introduction to all the stories, as well as a timeline and information about the author.This is recommended, specifically for the reason that you get a great sampling of this author for a relatively cheap price. My only small qualm with the book is the very small print; hence 4 stars instead of 5.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A few comments & an interesting medical fact, December 25, 2005

By 

magellan (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories (B&N Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

Dostoyevski's underground man character, although conceived in 1864, presages by more than 50 years the alienation and disaffection that became so widespread in the 20th century, especially in the so-called "lost generation" that grew up between the two world wars. As such, it became the pattern for generations of other literary anti-heroes whose existential angst was to reverberate through literature for the next hundred years and beyond. Overall, still a great classic and one whose philosophical and literary influences still resonate today.

An interesting comparison is with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, regarded by some critics as the first true novel, preceeding the usually proposed Samual Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, from several decades later, if I remember right. The Crusoe character is marooned for 17 or 18 years on the island and when some fellow Englishmen finally arrive to save him he's singularly inhospitable and suspicious of them. And overall the Crusoe character isn't especially likeable or social and seems to have a fairly prounounced anti-social streak, if not a deep antipathy, toward his fellow humans. In that way he's not so different from the Underground Man.

Dostoyevsky is of interest for another reason that has only recently come to the attention of medical science. Based on the notes in his diaries, Dostoyevsky may have had the very unusual neurological condition known as temporal-lobe epilepsy. This form of epilepsy produces no motor convulsions or seizures as in the classical Jacksonian epilepsy that is so well known. Rather, the effects are on the person's mental and emotional state.

In his notebooks Dostoyevsky reported experiencing visions and emotional states of such an intense nature, saying that that were so ecstatic that one would be willing give up one's life to experience it one more time, that it seems likely he did indeed have this rare neurological syndrome. It can produce intensely vivid imagery and visions, and ecstatic and euphoric emotional states. However, in some cases, it also produces uncontrollable rage and violence, but it appears that Dostoyevsky had the more pleasant and benign form of this disease.

Having studied the excerpts from his diaries describing these experiences and compared them to contemporary patients who have been diagnosed with the disease, the evidence seems compelling to me too that he did indeed have this condition. How it ultimately affected his writing I don't know, but perhaps this will be something that will enable us to gain further insight into his writings in the future.