“Notes From the Underground” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
This is a book that many considered as the first existentialist novel. The book is written in a first-person account by an unnamed narrator, a very minor clerk in the Civil Service who hated his mediocre job and only works in order to eat, who then decided to retire early after a distant relative passed away and leave him 6000 Ruble in the will.
And thus the narrator begins to live a life of inactivity and contemplation, writing in this rants or musings about his life and general observations, often in a bitter, cynical, and sometimes witty tones. It is a writing, as the fictitious narrator claims, only intended for himself and not to be shared with anyone else.
Perhaps the beauty of this book is that it’s not narrated by a saint with moral high ground, but an isolating (hence, “underground”) loser full of intoxicating spite, who has a humiliating social encounter with old schoolmates, and a weird pursue towards a prostitute half his age whom he both attracted to and repelled by. I.e. a broken angry man with a lot of complications.
It is through this unique vantage point that we can see an honest criticism about society, the dilemma between hating everyone he meets and the bitterness of being an outcast, a dilemma between yearning for a sense of connection to the world and at the same time wanting for total detachment and free-will from society.
Indeed, the book is a brilliant criticism of contemporary philosophies on rationalism and free-will, where Dostoevsky actually wrote it in response to Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s novel “What Is to Be Done” that argued a utopian society can be constructed on natural laws of rational self-interest, that if such society is constructed humanity will no longer have the problem of evilness.
In this anti-thesis, Dostoevsky then argued that in asserting free-will people actually often act against self-interest, that people are willing to exercise free-will even if it goes against their best interest hence people will do things that aren’t aligned with those laws of nature (aka rebellion); which is demonstrated in part 2 of the book where the narrator gets into several conflicts. The narrator ultimately suggests that we can choose happiness (in the form of self-interest) or freedom (free-will) as our goal, but not both. This is why utopia never realised.
Funny how perspectives from 1864 can be so relatable even today in 2024, especially Part 1 of the book where Dostoevsky wrote down his core arguments, before illustrating it in the examples in part 2.
In a sheer coincidence I’m reading this book at the age of 41, just one year over the age of the narrator at 40, or 2 years younger than Dostoevsky when he wrote this book at 43. And I’m glad that I only begin to read it in my 40s because I’m at that age where I can really relate with his observations, just as I started to feel how unequal the world is and how there’s just so much bullshit going on; with my tolerance towards the cheaters, the liars, the backstabbers of the world is wearing thin; while still enjoying the connections with society as a whole.
THE CHAOS THEORY 