Tag Archives: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Best Fiction Books I Read in 2024

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They Had No Deepness of Earth (2021) by Zero HP Lovecraft

Zero HP Lovecraft (@0x49fa98) is an anonymous internet poster I originally discovered around 2016 when I was looking at the accounts Naval Ravikant (@naval) followed on Twitter. His name and bio (horrorist) intrigued me, so I read his short story, “The Gig Economy,” which was like a modern cyberpunk take on “The Call of Cthulhu.”

I instantly became a fan and read all of Zero’s stories as they originally came out on his WordPress site (now on Substack), and later assembled in this collection. I had been meaning to re-visit the stories because they deserve (and often require) re-reading. His fiction is like a combination of the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft with the dense philosophical speculation of Jorge Luis Borges and the mind-bending science fiction of Ted Chiang.

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Are Modern Writers Getting Dumber?

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“Monkeying with Literature” (ca. 1877–78) by William Merritt Chase

When I read the fiction of 19th-century writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Herman Melville (among others), I am amazed by the depth and sophistication of their work, both psychologically and philosophically—not to mention the craftsmanship of their prose. Is anybody writing such complex fiction today? Society does not seem to make writers like they used to. (Myself included—though such writers inspire me to elevate my work.) Keep in mind that those writers were not professionally trained to be writers—almost all were self-taught. How were people so long ago seemingly so much more knowledgeable than we are today when we have so much more knowledge? Perhaps that very “knowledge” is the problem.

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10 Dostoyevsky Quotes on Social Anxiety

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dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1864 novel, Notes From Underground, is about an unnamed narrator who has gone “underground” to live in isolation from society. He shows several signs of social anxiety through his thoughts and actions. The following quotes from the Underground Man convey what social anxiety feels like. Continue reading →

Social Anxiety in Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground

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NotesFromTheUnderground

Notes From the Underground is an 1864 novel written by the Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who has gone underground, or withdrawn from society to live in isolation. Broken up into two parts, the first, called “Underground,” includes the narrator’s rambling thoughts and philosophies about life, consciousness, and all the things he dislikes about society. In the second part, “Apropos of the Wet Snow,” the narrator goes out into society and has several misguided interactions with people. Continue reading →