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Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics) Paperback – August 30, 1994

by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Author), Richard Pevear (Translator), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)
4.3 out of 5 stars 118 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Series: Vintage Classics
  • Paperback: 136 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (August 30, 1994)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 067973452X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0679734529
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.4 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (118 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsMore with the Mad Genius.........
By Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson on August 13, 2001
Format: Paperback
Quick read? I finished Crime and Punishment and thought I'd zip through Notes like a snack before going on to the Brothers Karamozov, afterall, it's barely over 100 pages. Quick read? Think again.
Imagine being locked in a very small room with a verbose, insane, brilliant, jaded, before-his-times, clerk-come-philosopher....with a wicked sense of humor, and a toothache that's lasted a month. Pleasant company....are you searching for the door yet?
For the first hour, he's going to rant about his philosophy of revenge, the pointlessness of his life, his superiority, his failure, oh yeah, and his tooth. FOr the second half of the book, he's going to tell you a tale, with the title "Apropos of the Wet Snow". Because of course, there's wet snow outside on the ground.
I will leave you with this encouragement. If you can get through this book, you will appreciate Doestoevsky more, understand Crime and Punishment better, and probably enjoy a good laugh more than once.
Notes from the Underground is not light reading, but it is well worth the effort. And the translation by Pevear, including the translators notes at the back, is excellent.
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4.0 out of 5 starsDeep analysis of the human condition
By Bryan A. Pfleeger on April 27, 2001
Format: Paperback
Notes From The Underground is Dostoevsky's grand look at the human condition from the perspective of a man living on the fringes of society. The short novel provides the key to much of the author's later and more fleshed out novels.
Presented in two parts the novel tells the story of the unnamed Undergound Man who is forced into a life of inaction by the reason driven society that he finds himself in.
Part I of the novel is a long monologue to an invisible audience which explains how the Underground Man came into existence. It is a masterpiece of Existentialist fiction and has been the cornerstone for many later writers including Freud and Camus. The ideas expressed in this part of the novel deal with the character's interactions with himself. This is also the mother of all anti-hero literature. Through the Underground Man's speech we identify him as an over sensitive man of great intellegence. We begin to identify with the character and understand him. While this part of the novel is idea laden it presents one of the great characters of modern fiction.
Part II of the novel is much more accessible to today's reader. This part of the novel deals with the Underground Man's interactions with the society around him. It is in this section that we see that he incapable of reacting in a normal way with the persons that he comes into contact with. He is not the rational man of Part I but a person driven to inaction by his own personal circumstances. He is spiteful, mean spirited and incapable of giving or receiving love to or from others.
On the whole this is a very important piece of world literature which deserves a very careful reading. The novel reads like an onion with each new chapter giving us deeper and deeper insight into the character. The modern reader may well grow tired of the writing style of the novel but if one has patience and reads carefully he will be rewarded.
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5.0 out of 5 starsOne of Dostoevsky's Best
By PseudoDionysius on December 15, 2002
Format: Paperback
First my confession: the first two encounters with this celebrated novella both ended with the book being rudely dismissed across the room near pg. 30. But ahh, the third reading felt positively as if a portable supernova had detonated between my two hands. My duty then as a reviewer is to tell you how you should approach this book and ultimately convince you to read it.
The most important thing you need to know about this book is that it is a POLEMICAL SATIRE. There is a great ideological distance between the narrator and Dostoevsky - in no way does he reflect the author's outlook. This fact is not obvious seeing that even his contemporaries were perplexed and generations of critics stymied. The opponent of Dostoevsky's polemic is the radical socialist Chernyshevsky, whose novel "What is to be Done?" (incidentally, Lenin's favorite novel) is parodied piecemeal throughout the novella. What the underground man represents is the logical extreme of a man who totally embraces Chernyshevsky's "rational egoism" and its socialist program. Chernyshevsky believed that once man is shown the truth through science and reason, the "new man" will inevitably renounce all irrational behavior. He also proposes that a new society be founded on socialist and materialistic principles, where the individual will is subjected for the betterment of humanity. In this book, Dostoyevsky seeks to undermine Chernyshevsky by showing that a strict adherence to this radical thought ends in a terrible cul de sac called the "man from underground". Where it diverges from being a mere satire is the fabulous and tortuous dialogue-monologue of this embittered man.
Although Chernyshevsky's overconfidence in science seems incredibly naïve to us now, this was certainly not the case in the 1860's.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Slime of His Time
By Bob Newman on June 19, 2003
Format: Paperback
The first words of this deeply disturbing, but powerful, novel are "I am a sick man....I am a spiteful man." and these may refer equally to the main character and to the author. Dostoevsky has written an amazing portrait of a loner, whose introverted, sick thoughts spill out on the pages in demented brilliance. The novel is a product of European cynicism, nihilism, and inertia, all of which reached a certain height in the paralyzed upper circles of 19th century Russia. Nobody could write such a book without some personal acquaintance with the mean moods of this anti-hero. The main character, who does nothing except hide from the world, is a total misfit, a loser in life at home, at work, and in love---a jerk, a dweeb, a dork, a geek in modern American parlance---yet through Dostoyevsky's clear prose, we see into his wounded soul. "Actually, I hold no brief for suffering, nor am I arguing for well-being." he writes, "I argue for...my own whim and the assurance of my right to it, if need be." He is apart from society, recognizes no social obligation. He argues that suffering is still better than mere consciousness, because it sharpens the awareness of your being, therefore suffering is in man's interest Someone who can argue that is not going to write an average novel. This is in fact not an average novel at all, but a book concerned with the play of ideas, ideas that flash around like comets and meteorites inside Dostoevsky's head. It can no more escape Dostoevsky's brain than a Woody Allen movie can escape Woody Allen.
The plot line of NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND is extremely slim. It concerns an underground man, a man like a rat or a bug, who lives outside, or more likely, underneath the world's gaze.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars"Long Live the Underground!"

Powerful, vivid, and insane. Notes from the underground is a quick but haunting tale of an anti-social nihilistic man who envies as much as he despises those who are different from... Read more

Published 10 days ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsA Gut-Punch for the Ages

"I am a sick man . . .", ellipsis included, is up there with "Call me Ishmael," "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," and "In the... Read more

Published 23 days ago by Steven D. Burt
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

very fine

Published 2 months ago by richard kent howie
3.0 out of 5 starsNot my favorite Dostoevsky, but still good, short, and worth a read

Not my favorite Dostoevsky, but still good, short, and worth a read. The P&V translation is great though, and includes footnotes and citations to clear up any ambiguities and... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Rembrandt Q. Einstein
5.0 out of 5 starsThe first widely popular Modern and Existentialist Novel

Written in 1864 (Making this the first widely popular Modern and Existentialist Novel), Notes from the Underground is One of the most important works in the History of literature. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Олег Орлов
3.0 out of 5 starsReceived

Good condition

Published 6 months ago by Marie Brown
3.0 out of 5 starsThree Stars

The narrator is hard to understand. There were a lot of questions from the class on this one.

Published 7 months ago by Sierra
5.0 out of 5 starsread it now

read this now. but if you related to the underground man, i have bad news, you're reading it the wrong way, probably aspire to be tyler durden, and are likely a gross brony mra. Read more

Published 7 months ago by Veronica
5.0 out of 5 starsLove it

I really like this book, it's different makes u think

Published 9 months ago by Ashley····…
3.0 out of 5 starsThree Stars

ok

Published 9 months ago by yoradrikei

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