Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky by far has the most intriguing opening lines of any books I’ve read:
I’m a sick man… Iam a spiteful man. Iam an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.
Not only does it get your attention right way:, it also gets you turning the pages to learn more about the underground man.
And Dostoevsky doesn’t disappoint, carrying on the momentum from the opening lines, the later text gives us more of the narrator’s honest confessions.
In fact, the whole first chapter is the Underground Man’s monologue. He doesn’t believes humans are irrational, in a sense they will always out of their desire and not self-interest.
And they can’t be made to act otherwise even when provided with reasons and awareness.
Thus, the very idea of The Crystal Palace utopian is flawed, according to Dostoevsky.
There’s a lot to unpack here. You will first question the sanity of the Underground Man, then as you come to know him better you might even relate to some of his points. It’s only when you get to the final part of the book that you realize the point Dostoevsky is trying to make with the Underground Man.
Only through some accounts of narrator’s youth do you get to get him better as he recalls his interactions with others, most notably his schoolmates. In his own words, he is not a Man of Action which is a tragic since he is too critical of himself but can not do anything to improve self.
All in all, Notes from Underground is a fun read. The first chapter can feel overwhelming, it is full of long run in sentences with references of Russian society of the past. However, the way it is written, it’s hard to put the book once you start the opening lines.