ONLINE: Notes from the Underground, at CCEL, Online at

Electronic Set B

Plot

Many consider Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground the first existentialist novel. The narrator and main character, often called “the Underground Man,” is a bitter, misanthropic retiree living in St. Petersburg. He lives each day in constant physical and psychological pain. He has no job and lives entirely off of his retirement funds. A bad tooth and an aching liver make it difficult for him to do anything but stay at home and write “notes” about his ennui and suffering. The Underground Man shares moments from his past, and through them, he explains how he came to despise both himself and other people. Masterfully, Dostoevsky immerses the reader in the dark, but fascinating, mind of his narrator. Notes from the Underground remains one of the great Russian novelist’s most popular works and is one of the most widely-read and influential works of classic literature of the last century.
--Kathleen O’Bannon
CCEL Staff

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Born: November 11, 1821, Moscow
Died: February 9, 1881, Saint Petersburg
Related topics: Biography, Criticism, interpretation, etc., Dostoyevsky, Fyodor,--1821-1881, Literature, Manners, and customs
Basic information: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) sometimes translated as Dostoevsky, was a Russian writer of novels, short stories, and essays. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. A Slavophile, nationalist and monarchist, he criticized the bourgeois, pre-materialist West and nihilism in many of his works.
Popular works: Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Notes from the Underground