What a fantastic read. Very sad. Here is a man so caught up in his reasoning that he cannot give himself to sentimentality until it overwhelms him and leaves him full of self-loathing. His intelligence and self-awareness cripples him. As an alcoholic in recovery, I resonated very much with this person who has no spiritual guide to give him some brief reprieve from his mind. He can only occasionally sense the “sublime and beautiful.”
It ends with him breaking down in front of someone who thought him a savior, and she sees him with pity because she knows he is in a far worse position then she, who was capable of freeing herself from her suffering because she allowed herself to feel the torture she had previously undergone. She allowed the protagonist to reach her heart. He loathes her after she catches a glimpse of his. It is a sort of torture he cannot allow himself to feel without shame—he can only analyze it and express it by loathing others, poking them, trying to get them to react in some human form. He is stuck in the self, in samsara, no matter who wittily he examines it. He can only rant and rave in his inertia.
I cannot claim to understand the historical context of this novella, but psychologically it gripped me. I was already expecting to like it because two years ago I read The Brothers Karamazov and loved that one very much, and I was not disappointed.
The beginning was heavy, and took much patience and effort to digest, but after having devoted a year-and-a-half of my life to reading Gravity’s Rainbow no book is truly “difficult” anymore.
If I were to rank the Russians I have read, I would say: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, then Nabokov.
There is just something special about Dostoevsky; he is brilliant because I think he writes with his soul the way I’m not sure the rest do.
by ratchooga
7 Comments
Notes from the underground is such a classic. One of the few books I reread every handful of years.
The Underground man is the PREMIER anti-role model. Incredible little story, pretty hilarious at times and wicked thoughtful!
It is one of my all time favorites. I find the beginning so funny and relatable, that antagonizing self loathing to the point of being melodrama. Sometimes I wonder if my love for these types of reads are a sign of depression or just an appreciation for black humor.
The copy I first read from the library had a fascinating forward that went into detail about the metaphor of the title that I loved so much I had to find that copy of the book to own. It has been a while since I read it, but my poorly remembered paraphrase: the space beneath the floorboards (the underground) are where mice and ghosts lived.
Dostoevsky, yes,
Nabokov too.
Its the funniest thing I have ever read
Dostoevsky really does a good job of representing how miserable high IQ autism can be.
Check out his short story White Nights! It very explicitly uses the plot structure of underground with a man who is not … sick and explores the implications!