Customer Reviews

Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

As everyone's said, these are good short stories by Dostoevsky to have read. They're all available for free online, of course, but I prefer to have a book such as this on hand instead, even if it means paying the five dollars.

For one, there is the motivational factor involved. I bought this book largely for the Notes From Underground, but the fact that there are other stories on there, and the fact that I payed for them, led me to read them as well. In this way, I discovered how great a story White Nights is, and I doubt I would have read it without buying this book.

Then there is also the introduction and footnotes that expand on the numerous aspects of the stories that by now are not readily apparent to the reader, especially if he's not Russian. Who, after all, knows what a "white night" is in the first place? I didn't think the introduction too great a piece of writing, and disagreed with in on some issues, but it is still a nice piece of critical writing on the stories to have. Certainly, it is better than what you'd find on Wikipedia.

Lastly, this book's paper has a pulpy feel, but the ink doesn't rub off on your fingers, and so it's quite nice to just sit down with it and read it. I, for one, always found reading books more enjoyable in a living room chair than in front of a computer screen.

This is a wonderful and faithful translation of the text - I for a while was a Dostoyevsky junkie, and it is possible even for the non-Slavic language speaker to tell a quality translation from a poor one. And Constance Garnett has been the standard for Dostoyevsky translation for some time.

In college, I took a reading and writing intensive Dostoyevsky class that surveyed all of his major works with the notable exceptions of the long(er) one Brothers K and the Idiot. I learned a lot from my professor, not only about Dostoyevsky, but about how to be a scholar and critical thinker and indeed human being. It is too bad that much of it washed off over time... But my professor wrote one of the leading critical articles of Dostoyevsky criticism of the 20th century, so I learned a lot from her about how to read Dostoyevsky. I believe we used the Constance Garnett translation for many of the books, but I am not sure if I read this particular edition.

One important and obvious but actually rarely completed aide to understanding Dostyoeveky is to wade through the morass of biographical and textual criticism, footnotes, historical background information, and intellectual debates of the era. Dostoyevsky does not write books; he composes symphonies. But the beauty of his books stems quite often from the diligent reader recognizing a faint refrain and following it through in all of its variations and twists and turns and interactions with his very confusing and interesting and sometimes mutually contradictory theses. One critic described his writing as consisting of "idea-voices." But to understand these one must understand how and why the characters say what they do, who they represent or caricature, and why Dostoyevsky has them say what they say.

There is no better example of this than Notes from Underground, the prototype novel of the "antihero). Garnett's translation is lovely and includes just the right character inflections and details that in other translations clang to the ground in awkwardness like dropped pots at a fancy dinner party.

So, if you do attempt to undertake reading Dostoyevsky, it is important to understand that it is an investment of not only time and energy but elan vital and critical thought and a tremendous emotional investment. To fail to do this is to only read the books at a surface level and grasp little or nothing and butcher something very beautiful. But provided that you are willing to do this, this is the write translation and these are the right size books to get started.

white nights, notes from the underground, the meek one, and dream of a ridiculous man - four parts that could make a book of study on shame. the introduction is the reason to get this edition - it's truly excellent, by Deborah Martinsen, researcher of shame and narrative at Columbia Uni, NY. Her other studies here, also excellent for overly passionate readers of D.:[..]

a shame it's not being reprinted. pun intended.

is where this book needs to be. just kidding. get past the first stream of consciousness part and theres a real story here. this book is mainly philosophy so go into it with that idea

This collection contains The Double, White Nights, Notes from Underground, The Meek One, and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. The stories have been reviewed elsewhere so I will only comment on the B&N edition.

I found the Introduction to be very helpful. The writing is sometimes hard so the Introduction was a help in understanding at times. The Introduction is not too long and it is divided into subsections for each of the 5 stories. A downside is that footnotes are in the back (very annoying to have to leaf to the back everytime). In the back of the book, there are two sections that I think are very good to have but unfortunately did not have enough substance; One section describes other authors that were inspired by the stories of this collection - only three though and not much detail is given; the other section shows comments about the stories from different people in different time periods. Once again, a good idea to have a section like this but not detailed whatsoever.

Overall, a great collection with some decent fluff. And a very reasonable price.

Barnes & Noble Classics just keeps the mediocrity coming with this edition of Dostoyevsky's stories. The stories are detailed studies of human psychology, as is much of D's work, and if you enjoy that sort of literature (as I do), then you'll enjoy the stories.

However, the introduction and followup discussion material that B&N attaches to their publications is too deep in Literary Criticism to be interesting to anyone not actually interested in that sort of thing. Summary after summary repeats itself as the author delves deep into the main characters in order to find that they are all, apparently, alike and extrapolates all sorts of things about the author. It left me utterly dry.

This isn't the first time I've been underwhelmed by B&N Classics. They did a poor job with Chekov's Ward 6 as well. This edition isn't as bad (or as flagrantly uninterested in the work) as the Chekov edition, but the dry lit crit treatment sucks the energy out of the stories.

There has got to be a better edition of these works out there. I would suggest looking for those instead of this cheap version. The cost may be low, but a better introduction and more interesting follow-on material would have been gladly accepted, even at a few pennies more. 5 stars for a great author, but -2 for a mediocre edition.