A mais profunda degradação, os mais vis sentimentos, um cinismo que queima, num anti-herói perfeito. Dostoyevsky no seu melhor. ( )

It must be said, Dostoevsky is my man. Whenever I read his stuff I feel like I’m in a drug-induced dreamscape of my own anxiety-ridden life. What a remarkable mind. ( )

The narrator of this two-part novella is the most thorough-going misanthrope I can recall encountering in literature. The one person he hates most is himself, a poverty-stricken retired minor government clerk.
Before reading the book, I’d heard it praised for its psychological insight. To the extent that this offers an unsparing depiction of a mindset, yes. But there is little exploration of why this man turned out as he did, only hints, such as his being an orphan. Or why he makes choices that will only deepen his isolation and misery. Or refuses to even admit he is choosing, feeling compelled instead.
The narrator rants about the futility of utopian social programs as if that were the only alternative to his life and rails about the fatuity of the conformist crowd. But is the alternative self-flagellation? At one point, the narrator reflects on why he’s writing this down and concludes, “It’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.” When he asks, “Which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings?” I wondered if those were the only two options.
Then there is Liza, a novice prostitute as if to illustrate the adage that misery loves company (if only for a little while). Imaginative fiction explores the boundaries of existence; prostitutes in nineteenth-century Russia were undoubtedly on that boundary. For that reason alone, it’s unsurprising that these are a recurring motif for Dostoevsky. Rather than dismissing Liza as a rough draft for Sonya in Crime and Punishment, I saw the narrator’s ambivalence and cruelty toward her as another way the book presents us with choices the narrator refuses to make for failure to recognize they exist.
Without falling into the fallacy of conflating Dostoevsky and the narrator, I think it’s fair to assume that in writing this, Dostoevsky was examining moods and reactions he knew from personal experience. His aim seems to be to suggest that there is a little bit of this miserable man in all of us. As the narrator says, “We are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. . . . I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway.”
I can’t say the book was a pleasure to read. That’s a left-handed tribute to Dostoevsky’s skill at creating an atmosphere and drawing the reader in. It’s also remarkable as an example of sustained monologue as a fiction technique. So, while I don’t think it’s on the level of his undeniably great novels, it’s still an achievement in its own way. ( )

Notes From Underground depicts a protagonist/narrator who perceives himself to be an outcast, and is isolated from the society as a result. His isolation has turned his mind into an echo chamber in which he seeks pleasure in his mental anguish while despising humanity. At the beginning of this book, the reader might ask themselves whether there was any need for this book to be written, but as one gets more acquainted with the severely conflicted nature of the narrator, they are bound to feel increasingly at home with the feverish battle between the narrator's love for seclusion and his desire to be noticed. Dostoevsky masterfully paints this tug-of-war between the narrator's egoistic inertia and the constant temptation of gaining acceptance among his acquaintances through vulnerability, and the end product is a bundle of hopefulness and heartbreak ( )

The underground man is the worst kind of sniveling, worthless, and delusional little rat ever to be a stain on God's creation. ( )