From AudioFile
Recorded Books has done it again. This production of Dostoevsky's work is stark, dark and eerie. On the surface the story of one man's rant against a corrupt, oppressive society, this philosophical book explores the deeper themes of alienation, torment and hatred. George Guidall's expert reading allows us to hear the anger and distrust in Dostoevsky's character but also gives the listener room for interpretation. While Guidall's voice isn't overpowering, the venom and despair of the character are completely credible. The production is leanÐone voice, one microphone. The effect is intelligent, resourceful and effective. R.I.G. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Book Description
This Norton Critical Edition contains Michael Katz's new translation of the 1863 novel, introduced and annotated specifically for English-speaking readers. Backgrounds and Sources, also freshly translated by the editor, includes excerpts from Dostoevsky's letters and notebooks and from "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions," as well as a substantial extract from N. G. Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?, the utilitarianism of which Dostoevsky replies to in Notes from Underground. Since its publication, Notes from Underground has been emulated and parodied. By assembling varied responses to the text, Michael Katz links this seminal novel to the Underground-man-inspired works of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchendrin, Woody Allen, Robert Walser, Ralph Ellison, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney. A broad selection of criticism includes the work of both Russian and western critics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-from Nikolai Mikhailovsky and Lev Shestov to Ralph E. Matlaw and Joseph Frank. A Chronology of Dostoevsky's life and career is included, as are a List of Principle Translations and a Selected Bibliography. No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehenive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian


Download Description
I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well - let it get worse! I have been going on like that for a long time - twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)


From the Publisher
"I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man," the irascible voice of a nameless narrator cries out. And so, from underground, emerge the passionate confessions of a suffering man; the brutal self-examination of a tormented soul; the bristling scorn and iconoclasm of alienated individual who has become one of the greatest antiheroes in all literature. Notes From Underground, published in 1864, marks a turning point in Dostoevsky's writing: it announces the moral political, and social ideas he will treat on a monumental scale in Crime And Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This Norton Critical Edition contains Michael Katz's new translation of the 1863 novel, introduced and annotated specifically for English-speaking readers. Backgrounds and Sources, also freshly translated by the editor, includes excerpts from Dostoevsky's letters and notebooks and from "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions," as well as a substantial extract from N. G. Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?, the utilitarianism of which Dostoevsky replies to in Notes from Underground. Since its publication, Notes from Underground has been emulated and parodied. By assembling varied responses to the text, Michael Katz links this seminal novel to the Underground-man-inspired works of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchendrin, Woody Allen, Robert Walser, Ralph Ellison, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney. A broad selection of criticism includes the work of both Russian and western critics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-from Nikolai Mikhailovsky and Lev Shestov to Ralph E. Matlaw and Joseph Frank. A Chronology of Dostoevsky's life and career is included, as are a List of Principle Translations and a Selected Bibliography. No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehenive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

FROM THE CRITICS

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