This book is kind of really funny but also maybe not entirely supposed to be funny. But then again, I think that Dostoyevsky is seen as very serious, and he is, but there’s some irony built in there. But I read this this morning while I was at the coffee shop, which I tend to do on weekends. I showed up and there’s a group of three sets of parents and a handful of kids taking up 15% of the tables in the shop but 45% of the space.
So I sit down and start reading and there’s a kind of misanthropy contained in the opening section of the novel and I am nodding my head along as I am waiting for my bagel to be delivered. While I am doing so, I am half listening to the conversation. The group of parents of children no older than three are answering questions about my city because one of the families just moved to town. Well they’re already talking about what high schools to send their kids to, and well this is a sensitive subject for me because the city schools here struggle from a history of racist policy, segregation both de jur and de facto, and white people making their individual choices to write off the the public schools (while being perfectly willing to utilize the magnet schools) is a huge problem.
So maybe I started connecting a little too much with the underground man looking to excise himself from wider society and to find it nearly impossible to do so.
Anyway, I was able to put my headphones in and block out the white privilege happening around me and enjoy the novel, which feels wonderfully sophomoric in an infectious way.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Underground-Second-Norton-Critical-Editions/dp/0393976122/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=notes+from+the+underground+norton&qid=1552257292&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull)