Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Reads as if written by a rabid man possessed by a ceaseless torrent of thoughts.

Doystovevsky explicitly writes at the beginning that the unnamed narrator (the one writing the Notes) is "of course, imaginary." However the unreliability of the narrator seems to mock the sincerity of such a claim. Interestingly, the Notes laid bare Doystovevsky's personal thoughts more explicitly than his other books (according to the introduction of my copy).

The first part is a critique of Enlightenment reason, utilitarianism and mathematical determination. The masochistic narrator recognizes that man's volition takes is often contrary to reason, volition being "the manifestation of the whole life" (p.35).

The second part recounts his days as a young man, and refers a lot to master and slave morality. Our weak-bodied narrator believes himself superior to others (especially intellectually) but is shown that he is not a higher man in his dealings with others. Instead of breathing fresh air in the tall mountaintops (like Zarathustra) he broods in the musty, suffocating underground, filled with resentment.

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