Perusal of Notes from Underground

I finished Notes from Underground yesterday morning and I can't help but compare the experience with the one I had for other works of Dostoevsky.  His works draw you in.  I found myself struggling to stay with the book for the first 3-5 chapters.  Then I just found myself immersed in the whole experience.  Even after I put the book down for a breather, there is still a part of my brain that stays absorbed in the story.  When I reached the end of the book, I found myself feeling strangely cut off.  I find myself so involved with the characters that I can't let go that easily.    

Notes from Underground is stark and existentialist in essence.  It deals with the darker side of a person and what we as individuals, fail to admit to ourselves. 

 One of the things that struck me was the argument of the narrator on why people do the thing that seems to be against all common sense and defies rational thought. "...reason is an excellent thing, there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses."  He argues that one of the things that people fail to consider is the presence of choice and that individuals will sometimes go as far as doing the thing that is most harmful to himself just to prove that he has a freedom of choice.

"And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as postive as twice two makes four, and such postiveness is not life, but is the beginning of death."

As always, reading Dostoevsky is a heady experience and although Notes from Underground is not at par with The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, I still find the experience well worth it.