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Summary: "Can a Man of Perception Respect Himself at All?"
Review: Published in 1864, "Notes from the Underground" served thematically as the basis for Dostoevsky's subsequent masterpieces, such as "Crime and Punishment," "The Brothers Karamazov," and "The Possessed," and yet, many of those acquainted with his works consider this novella, despite its obvious brevity, to be every bit as monumental as his later writings. I, for one, would agree."Notes from the Underground" is at times very funny, but overall is an extremely dark and disturbing work to say the least (as were nearly all of Dostoevsky's writings), and the Underground Man himself is one of literature's greatest creations, a complex anti-hero (THE anti-hero) who evokes both sympathy and scorn. Reader be warned: you will probably not LIKE the main character. Here's a hint: you are not supposed to. You may be able to relate to him at times, but for the most part, you will find him extremely frustrating. The novella opens with the lines "I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man...", the text of the novella is not an attempt to convince the reader otherwise, the protagonist IS a spiteful man. My advice is to not get too caught up in how he is acting, but in what he is saying. This is not a book in which you are supposed to feel like one of the characters, you are an objective witness. Use his actions and words as insights into what Dostoevsky is saying. Hopefully, as you approach the end of the novella, you will begin to see confirmed what is laid down in the classic (infamous?), existentialist Part One. Dostoevsky explored the dark side of man's nature, and consequently, his stories are dark. Do not read his works expecting them to be light-hearted and full of joy and triumph, do not expect to get a "warm fuzzy" feeling from them. If you read anything of Dostoevsky's expecting a light read, you will be disappointed. Also, please do not assume that The Underground Man is supposed to be a manifestation of Dostoevsky himself, he is not. Dostoevsky certainly was a dark, "underground" type of person, but this is by no means an autobiography. The main character is bizarre, and paradoxical in the extreme, and he is absolutely original. Try to think of a similar character in literature before the time "Notes from the Underground" was released. I certainly can't... If you approach this work with an open mind, it may very well prove to be the most powerful reading experience you will ever have. Seriously.
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Summary: Sent to Cynic Heaven
Review: If you can sometimes enjoy your own bad moods, you'll love this strange little book. Most of Dostoevsky's novels are long epics with hundreds of characters and very complex plots. *Notes ...* is the exact opposite. It is hardly novel length and little happens except a lot of cleverly misanthropic ranting by the mentally disturbed but witty and engaging protagonist who seeks a kind of freedom in failure and absurdity. Read it on a rainy afternoon, if you like that sort of thing. Put in on the shelf between Camus and Sartre.
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Summary: My liver hurts
Review: Oh yes folks, the way the world is moving--all of its gene and DNA tampering, alienated labor, hyper-consciousness, and disillusionment--it appears as though underground men are going to be popping up all over the place, if they haven't already. It's all here, and what Dostoevsky had predicted through his dazzling clairvoyance, is already happening so take heed you capitalist drones, you mad scientists; you'll soon drown the world under the machine once and for all, until there isn't anything human left in our existence. To put it simply, I enjoyed this book thoroughly, so pick it up and make yourself sick with joy as I have.
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Summary: Everyone Must Read This
Review: This is perhaps the best novella ever written; everyone should read it. Dostoyevsky's writing is evocative and powerful, both in that it evokes feelings and in that these feelings are feelings that you will always find yourself sharing. You will shudder at the degree to which you resemble the petty, unhappy narrator of this little book--at the degree to which you are tortured by the everpresent gaze of popular culture and of yourself, and the degree to which to find that spite and irrationality pervade your everyday modes of thought. What makes Dostoyevsky unique among 19th-century authors is his connection to philosophical debates; his critique of the Enlightenment is perhaps one of the most powerful expressions of what contemporary thinkers refer to as "the crisis of modernity." But unlike the vast body of existentialist, marxist, and post-structuralist writing that has proliferated during this century, Notes from Underground's critique wields intense emotional power. Against the background of humanistic faith in progress and reason, the narrator finds himself mired in his own spite and squalidity, and in his own self-hatred he comes to view all humanity cynically. Dostoyevsky's critique of the Enlightenment is devastating. The narrator stares at the statement "2+2=4" and then rejects it, questioning whether it really matters anyway. For Dostoyevsky, like Foucault, power is a productive relation--power always produces resistance. As such, all utopian schemas of rationalization are bound to carry the seeds of their own defeat. Humans, Dostoyevsky tells us, will always find new ways to express their stupidity and irrationality. Central to this book is Dostoyevsky's explosion of the public/private dichotomy. The progress of Enlightenment humanism (represented by a reference to Kant's notion of 'the lofty and the beautiful') situates the individual as a cog in a rational social machinery, but this rationalization totally fails to extend into the private sphere--the Underground. The utter squalidity of the narrator's private life is horrifying because the reader always feels that she can relate to the narrator's tortured feelings. Here lies the disturbing power of Dostoyevsky's work. On the other hand, from a philosophical point of view, Dostoyevsky's focus on the private sphere becomes a source of optimism. Dostoyevsky's politicization of the private opens up new spaces for political agonivity: the narrator uses the Underground as a space of spiteful critique, but the Underground can also enable personal emancipation from the contingent roles coerced by the technical imperatives of rationalized society.
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Summary: The Confession of a Tormented Soul
Review: Notes From The Underground is perhaps one of the most revealing portraits of a great genius that I have read to date. It is where the author lays bare his soul and reveals the conflicts of his heart, conflicts that were to plague him for the rest of his life, conflicts that are reflected in all of his writings. He was a strange man haunted by contrary of thoughts of fate and redemption vs. freedom and autonomy. And nowhere is this conflict better expressed than in Notes From The Underground. The protagonist is a self proclaimed spiteful man who is intelligent and disdainful of his contemporaries. He is a masochist and in his pain he doubts the validity of the ideal of happiness. He does not believe that life improves. He prefers exalted suffering to shallow happiness. He dreads the coming of the scientific age where he claims man will be reduced to a mere cipher on a page of endless numbers. He asserts that what makes us human is our will to rebel against the facts. Later Dostoyevsky became obsessed with the theme of redemption through suffering. But this timeless theme fuels his imagination and peoples his novels with unforgettable characters. So I recommend this seminal novel as a wonderful prelude to reading the great novels which followed in its wake. It is a disturbing book. But it's true to life and to the realism which made Dosstoyevsky the father of modern existentialism and sociology.
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Summary: Man From Underground...
Review: "I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man." Notes from Underground is one of the most influential pieces of fiction in Western European history. It contains an all-out assault on Enlightenment rationalism and the idea of progress which foreshadows many such assaults in the mid-to-late twentieth century. An outstanding example of Dostoyevsky's psychological skills, depicting a character motivated by many contradictory impulses are found in the novel. One of the most salient characteristics of the Underground Man is his profound self-contempt combined with an exquisitely sensitive ego--a combination that is much discussed these days. Portraying him as one of the first anti-heroes in fiction, a protagonist utterly lacking every trait of the Romantic hero and living out a futile life on the margins of society. Such figures were to dominate much serious fiction in the mid-twentieth century, notably Albert Camus' Meursault in The Stranger. Dostoyevsky thus makes clear that the underground man's irrationalist solution is no better than the rationalists' systems.
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Summary: Top 3 of all time
Review: This book oozes with apathy, empathy, sorrow, pain brough to you by Dostoevsky's own brand of catharsis. A must read for anyone who has a pulse. Short, to the point, and entertaining. One of the best endings in all of literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Good novel; Norton is excellent edition
Review: Note: This review pertains only to the Norton edition, which (because of database issues, apparently) is not necessarily the item you clicked on. Since so much has been said about the novel itself, I'll speak only briefly about that, and then spend the rest of the review discussing this particular edition of the novel. The novel itself is, as others have said, a good key to unlocking Dostoevsky's larger novels, much like 'Crying of Lot 49' is a key to the rest of Pynchon. That said, this novel doesn't quite carry the same punch as, say, Crime and Punishment. It's definitely more of a character study than an exercise in plot development. Although the character study gets going immediately, it takes a while for anything to really "happen". This isn't a criticism, just a warning. Eventually, the narrator gets around to telling some anecdotes about past relationships with people: his schoolmates, his boss, his domestic employee, and a young prostitute. Through his descriptions of each of these relationships, you see exactly how pathetic the narrator is, and how utterly incapable of sustaining a normal human relationship he is. In this sense, he is very similar to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho: constantly thinking about all the things he like to do to people he resents, and then doing nothing. The novel is a quick read -- only about 90 pages long. The rest of this edition is filled with typical Norton material: background and inspiration, criticism, and letters from Dostoevsky to his brother. These extras are well organized and footnoted. The text itself is also footnoted somewhat helpfully. Editor Michael Katz explains some obscure references, but also occasionally explains the obvious (e.g., "folded his arms a la Napoleon" is noted to mean "folded his arms like Napoleon.") Nonetheless, the notes do lead to a fuller appreciation of Dostoevsky's meaning. The translation is also superb, especially in comparison to the dated Penguin Classic edition. I began reading this novel in the form of the Penguin, and found it very stiff and slow-going. By contrast, I picked up the Norton and was immediately engaged by it. I think there is only a couple of dollars difference between the two editions, so I strongly recommend you get this one. (Unless you also need the novella "The Double", which is included in the Penguin, but not the Norton.) So, all in all, this book is perhaps ideally read after you've read one other Dostoevsky book, and are preparing to read a larger one. It will remind you of some themes, and then open your mind to new ones.
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Summary: The first existential anti-hero
Review: Dostoyesky's anti-hero is the the first of a long line of existential anti-heroes that followed later in the 20th century. Clearly, here is a man who is alienated from his bretheran. He has burrowed so deep internally that he can not connect with outsiders. He is trapped by his superior intellect and his heightened consciousness showers him with agony. He has no clue how to relate to men and women of any social status. He is alone. He foreshadows the players in the dramas of Samuel Beckett and Sartre. He is Nietszche and Kierkegaard in the ways in which they experienced their lives. He is The Stranger of Camus. He anticipates the 20th century anti-hero of Nabokov in Lolita and protagonists like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Honest, brilliant, alienated, articulate and alone. He finds it impossible to channel his intellect into positive action: he lives in a state of paralysis. Most of all, the anti-hero is Dostoyesky, the author, penning immortal lines of literature from debtors prison. To understand clearly the influence of existentialism in 20th century literature, one must first understand this germinal literary classic.
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Summary: Absolutely Brilliant
Review: Normally I wouldn't add a review to a book that already has 100+ reviews, but someone gave a review that has two very serious mis-conceptions that need to be clarified. First, the character of the man from underground is exactly the _opposite_ of the Idiot. The Idiot was decidedly _meant_ to represent the alternative to the type of sickness that Dostoevsky presents in the narrator of the _Notes_, and later in Raskolnikov of _Crime and Punishment_ and Ivan K. in _The Brothers Karamazov_ . In fact, whereas one of the central, first-named characteristics of the underground man is his "un-attractiveness," Dostoevsky meant the Idiot to be a depiction of a "positively beautiful" human being, according to his own letter to his niece. The underground man's painful, paradoxical self-division and hyper-conciousness is exactly _opposite_ of the Idiot's simple "Christ-like" love. Second, _Notes From Underground_ was published in 1864-- well _after_ he was sent to Siberia in 1849. In fact, alot of the satire in the _Notes_ is directed at the utopianist leanings of the rationalist political manias that Dostoevsky was himself involved in to some extent before his sentencing. This is the turning-point work, where he largely grew _out_ of the style he had before his exile. If you want an example of early Dostoevsky (pre-exile) _Poor Folk_ is an excellent place to start, and I would also suggest _The Landlady_ as a short novella that shows his early interest in themes (isolation, suffering, etc.) that got their first clear vision in _Notes From Underground_.
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