The other day, I noticed a book titled “Notes from underground” among other books that I have at home.
Strangely enough, although I had this book for quite some time, and I couldn’t remember who gave it to me and when, I hadn’t read it, while I had read most of my other books.
The author of the book was Fyodor Dostoevsky, one of the most well-known classical literature authors.
Since the great Fyodor Dostoevsky himself had written it, I was very curious to know what the book talked about.
Plot
Throughout the book, the “Man from underground” keeps talking about his personal worries, uncertainties, and concerns, which are described in a subtle, philosophical way.
No, Dostoevsky will not offer his reader a free meal; the reader has to earn their meal by putting their mind to work hard – sometimes, even overtime – to decode the messages hidden in the hero’s narrative.
This is not an easy read, for sure, since it requires from a reader to be totally concentrated and pay full attention to the hero’s train of thought, since the latter is sometimes hard to follow.
It is, in fact, as the hero himself admits, a feverish monologue with no apparent purpose and direction. Or is it?
Through his internal struggle, the “Man from underground” conveys important subliminal messages.
These messages may not seem to hide a lot, at first.
But just like a concise dictionary, which is complete yet not as analytical as a fully-fledged dictionary, the book’s short, dense, and disordered messages can be treated by the reader as dictionary entries that can lead to lengthy analyses and discussions on serious topics and issues, provided that the necessary time and attention are given to each individual message.
Thus, a reader should not judge the book incorrectly by its small size.
The setting of the book, which is nineteenth-century Russia, combined with the hero’s background, as a former civil servant who inherited a fortune, resigned, and retired into an underground apartment, are key aspects that largely determine the course of the plot.
What I think of the book
Through his struggle with himself and his demons and living nightmares, the author uses the hero to touch deeper social and philosophical issues, which mostly rotate around a dead-end theme.
He doesn’t, however, provide the reader with a specific solution, and not even a hint about how those issues can be effectively addressed.
He rather leaves a question mark, on which, the reader is asked to elaborate, offer their own perspective, and thus benefit from reading the book.
This form of “interactivity” in seeking a solution together with the reader differs, I think, from the practice that other famous authors of the time used to follow in their texts.
Although the book is considered a “serious” and “heavy” read, it has a deeply human side.
After all, and leaving deeper philosophical issues and concerns aside, the hero’s honesty that characterizes his narrative makes it easy for a reader to relate to his human problems, which are actually problems faced by humans from the dawn of time to the present day.
If I were the hero’s best friend
Based on the hero’s incessant complaining about all things in life, a reader would assume that what the hero actually needs is good advice to deal with a series of problems.
A close and trusted friend could be a source of such advice, although the hero of the book apparently lacks one.
However, even if I were the hero’s best friend, I don’t think that he would ever listen to me and the advice that I could offer to him.
I believe that this pessimistic outlook in life that permeates the entire book is an untreatable condition.
The only way to really benefit from reading it today, and I think that this could be one of the author’s major motives to write it, is to discover the positive ultimate relations, in the form of problem solutions, that remain to be revealed by the reader himself or herself, rather than offered by the author through a pain-free process.