was dostoyevsky the underground man? reading his work it's

Big if true

What is noteworthy about Dostoyevsky's works in general is that his protagonists are either in the realm of being (semi-)autobiographical or being his ideal.

Don't forget to consider Dostoyevsky has an incredible acumen in regard of psychologizing people.

To your initial question: I didn't read this book, but all five major novels of his, and having some background info on him put a lot of content from his works into perspective.

>>9371064
go back behind your paywall you fucking retard

File: Vladimir_Nabokov_1973.jpg (432KB, 671x1024px) Image search: [Google]

432KB, 671x1024px

Sigh...

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Dislike him. A cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. A prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. Some of his scenes are extraordinarily amusing. Nobody takes his reactionary journalism seriously.
The Double. His best work, though an obvious and shameless imitation of Gogol's "Nose."
The Brothers Karamazov. Dislike it intensely.
Crime and Punishment. Dislike it intensely. Ghastly rigmarole.

Full article about why Dostoebsky is shit:
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/magazine/nabokov-on-dostoyevsky.html?pagewanted=all

>>9371187
nabokov has poor taste, though. No wonder coming from a pure academician

>>9371058
Dostoevsky was a deeply religious Christian by the time he wrote that book. The social anxiety of the underground man was probably his, but the ideas and lifestyle was more likely based on people he knew and came from a place where Dosto thought he might have ended up if things had been different for him.

>>9371187
really makes you think

>>9371187
Nabokov was a huge lefty liberal married with a Jewess, he disliked Dostoevsky solely for his nationalist and anti-semitic views. Lenin banned republishing his books for the same reason.

>>9371187
Man, I love Nabokov.

>>9371400
kek

>>9371058
What was Dosto like as a person? Are there many accounts of his character by people who've met him?

>>9371402
>Dostoyevsky's character and interests made him an outsider among his 120 classmates: he showed bravery and a strong sense of justice, protected newcomers, aligned himself with teachers, criticised corruption among officers and helped poor farmers. Although he was solitary and inhabited his own literary world, he was respected by his classmates. His reclusiveness and interest in religion earned him the nickname "MonkPhotius."

>At the parties I gave, Dostoevsky showed himself to be a charming person. He told his stories, and he displayed his wit and humor, as well as his unusual and original way of thinking. As a new person entered the room, however, Dostoevsky became silent for a moment and looked like a snail retreating into its shell, or like a silent and evil-looking pagan idol. And this lasted until the newcomer produced a good impression on him…. If the stranger engaged Dostoevsky in conversation, one generally heard him make some rude remark, or saw a sour look on his face.

>>9371187
Oh no, this makes it impossible for me to like Dostoyevsky now

>>9371405

Literary me

>>9371422
Nah.

I doubt any person on 4chan has the same moral and personal standard as Dostoevsky.

>>9371438
*gambles*

>>9371450
A lot better than the hateful, rampant nihilism in this website. Plus, gambling is one of the lesser vices, imo.

>>9371456
*cheats on wife*

>>9371462
Well shit I didn't know that

>>9371058
Dostoevsky lived quite a fair bit of what he wrote about: he was a gambler, an alcoholic with a thing for the uncomfortably younger girls and was thrown in prison. He probably felt genuine misanthrophy at times before he found Christianity, which probably explains why he had such an effortless understanding and empathy for such characters like the underground man.

>>9371187
wtf i hate russia now!

>>9371468
*cums on your face*

Dosty has a thing for younger girls? Where did you get that info? Pretty sure it is false.

>>9371058
kinda sorta
not really
you dig?

>>9371058
Like some of his characters, they're based off certain mindsets he has. The underground man i assume is lightly based off his own early life

The underground man also figures in his shorter works. I read his 1848 novella White Nights, and the narrator is a lonely man who lives in solitude, who spends his time reading books and in being in thrall to reveries, and this makes him unable to relate to the woman he meets. It's all about how living a life of fantasy and solitude can alienate a person from others, and from their own souls, even. He is not as spiteful as the underground man, but thematically it's very similar. This was written before Dostoevsky's Siberian exile, so he had been thinking about the pitfalls of dreaming and solitude for a long time.

A similar figure is the narrator of his A Gentle Creature from 1876. A spiteful, miserly, proud and despotic pawn-broker, a self-confessed dreamer, gradually alienates his sixteen year old wife until she kills herself. Again it's all about the pitfalls of living a spiteful life in solitude, and being in thrall to fantasies of revenge and recovering wounded pride, and how this completely ruins his marriage.

So yes, the figure of the spiteful fantasist, whose delusions alienate him from other people, himself, and, morality, pops up quite often. Also look at Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, who fantasizes about being Napoleon.