We don't normally think of the classics of world literature as page turners, but I found especially the second half of Dostoevsky's novella to be exactly that. It's a bit like watching a slow motion psychological train wreck, at first from a safe distance that makes it seem like someone else's melodrama, but then, as the wreckage careens towards you, increasingly as another potential casualty. As you might imagine, the pages move faster and faster the closer things come.
The book relates, in two parts, the first person tail-chasing anguish of a hyper-self-conscious misanthrope. First, we get a short summary of his ... aborted nihilism? ... I'm not quite sure what to call his description of his philosophy of life. Afterwards, we hear the story of how he arrived at this life of self-imposed underground isolation. Overall, we come to feel the way that our own consciousness can become a labyrinth and a sickness. We learn to distrust the only tool we have for our self-knowledge. We begin to suspect that thought itself is there merely to torment us and send us in circles. All this may sound hysterical, and it certainly is. But simply calling it 'madness' doesn't make it go away, and won't prevent us from slipping into its tortured circular logic. Instead it forces us to truly ask the question of whether there is any happiness at all in being a modern human.
On a technical note, I read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation that a lot of folks online recommended. I don't have anything to compare it to, but it seemed to read quite naturally to me, and had an interesting introduction that situates the novella in Dostoevsky's life and times. Highly recommended.
#reread
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