![Cover image for Notes from underground / Fyodor Dostoevsky ; translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky [sic] ; with an introduction by Richard Pevear.](http://www.syndetics.com/index.aspx?type=xw12&client=slplp&upc=&oclc=&isbn=9781400041916/LC.JPG "Cover image for Notes from underground / Fyodor Dostoevsky ; translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky [sic] ; with an introduction by Richard Pevear.")
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 153 pagesThe nameless narrator of Notes from Underground, Doestyevsky's first mature work and shortest novel, is an entirely pathetic figure, alienated from the world and himself, sick unto death. There is a very little plot - a meeting with some old schoolmates and a trip to a brothel adequately convey the brokenness of the narrator, after which there is nothing of importance left to relate. Notes from Underground fits snugly into the genre of confessional literature - if Rousseau felt pride for sins for which St Augustine felt shame, the Underground Man is proud of his shame, since that is the very sign of his consciousness. He feels nothing but contempt for the modern world, but he has no escape from it, only himself and his books, and neither suffices.
Painfully true to life, this is not a book I enjoyed, but one that I admire greatly.
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