Reviews

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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annacrouse's review against another edition

4.0

First time listening to an audiobook without reading the book alongside. I would've enjoyed it better if I just read it myself though.

alisarae's review against another edition

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5.0

Going into this book I had a vague idea that it was about Dostoevsky's time in prison, or being politically persecuted... or something to that nature. I was so surprised that it is totally not about that, and still just as good as I had hoped.

I was completely blown away by the opening discussion on how algorithms will fail to accurately predict human behavior because they will not take into account that humans will act against their better interests out of spite for being called predictable. Take that, The Man! Lol. While I knew that scientific ideas had strong circulation in the 19th century (Frankenstein, etc), I had not thought about how refined the discussion could be, such that 150 years later Dostoevsky's argument is even more relevant now than it was during his time.

The second part is a day in the life of the narrator that kind of illustrates the anti-algorithm argument. The narrator is an antihero (he makes a coy meta reference to this at the end of the book): a man who has no friends because he refuses to play along by society's rules and thinks himself more intelligent because of it, who would be pitiable except he is so self-aggrandizing, who recognizes that the source of his mysogyny is his own self-hatred and self-loathing. In other words, the narrator is a portrait of chan internet.

A few days ago I read Max Read's analysis of the new David Fincher movie The Killer (maxread.substack.com/p/david-finchers-new-movie-the-killer) and his article describes the Loser Internet's ideal man, the "sigma male." So that description was fresh in my mind when I was reading Notes from Underground and I found the overlap between the two quite stunning. The Max Read article explains a brief history of the sigma male and how to recognize its characteristics, but if you want to deeply understand the psychology of why trolls reject society and hate women and idealize the sigma male, you will not find a better explanation than in Notes from Underground.

(PS Now that I think about it, I think the audiobook narrator I listened to also narrated Lolita? Interesting juxtaposition.)

savannah_lawl's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

dragonboy2209's review against another edition

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emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

i loathed the first part: a jumbled potpourri of unorganised emotions and trauma-dumping that lasts for 50 pages - whilst it nailed the school-shooter-esque, narcissistic, self-victimising unreliable narrator, completely lacking any plot whatsoever, it was completely tedious to read and felt like a chore; the second section was a 4/5 at parts, the plot moved at a perfect pace at times (but rarely - a conversation would be dragged out for pages and pages when it only had to be one page), the characterisation of the narrator was done superbly, making him relatable but also utterly despicable, but the writing style and prose was not mind-blowing or spectacular in any way, and the boring parts dominated most of the texts