the double - as someone who studied psychology at university, i found this story fascinating. a little disconcerting, but fascinating. i really enjoyed this glimpse into human (in)sanity.

↠ 4 stars


the gambler - this actually made me quite sad. the story was a little all over the place, but i really felt for alexei. such a tragic story about compulsions and seemingly unrequited love.

↠ 3.5 stars

4.5 stars (or who really cares?)

Two great books from the master.

I would rate the Gambler as a five-star read.

It is an impeccable story that misses nothing and includes all on the human spectrum.

I shake my head at this novella. At these three-hundred or so written pages. Stunning.

And the Double as a four-star story.

He is a singular author.

the gambler - an intriguing intro to his work, can clearly see where he might take these stylistic elements in better, fuller works. a very engaging documenting of very empty people that almost seems reticent to take its premise to its limits (2 stars)

the double - love figuring out what an author is doing prose-wise early one and appreciating it throughout. the virginia woolf whirlpool comment applies heavily here. (4 stars)

I’ve never been a big casino gambler, mostly because the shame and humiliation of losing my hard-earned money has always eclipsed the joy of winning. With few exceptions, I always bellied up the blackjack table with a set amount of money; and if I double that amount, I’ll walk away; if I lose it, I’ll do the same. Deviating from that tack can result in soul-wrenching losses. At the same time, it can generate some miraculous strokes of good fortune. Both fates are described in brilliant, painful detail in “The Gambler” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a 156-page novel that reminded me of every major win and loss in my gambling career.
In July of 1995, I was a 22-year-old recent graduate, flat broke and living in Nashville. I slept on friends’ couches, worked on occasion, but basically lived hand to mouth. One day two friends suggested a trip to the casinos in Tunica, Mississippi. Considering I had $120 to my name, blackjack seemed like the best way to double my money quickly.
The drive took several hours, during which time I pondered all the ways I’d spend my inevitable windfall, i.e., beer, cigarettes, certain things which remain illegal. When we arrived in Tunica, I went directly to the tables, then proceeded to spend 10 hours turning $120 into $0. By that point, my friends had already adjourned to the car, to sleep off their winnings.
Swine.
Undeterred by my destitute situation (really, that was the last money I had in the world), I rousted my friend Andrew and begged him to give me $10 – enough for two hands of blackjack.
“You’re just going to blow it,” he said. “But fine, here.”
Wired on caffeine and cigarettes, I bellied up to the table again at 5 a.m., plopped my crinkly 10-spot on the table, received my two $5 chips, then promptly lost the first hand.
That, however, was the end of that – and for a long time. Less than three hours later, I’d parlayed my last $5 into $650.
Now, I don’t know if you remember what it’s like to be 22 years old, but you can basically survive an entire semester on that kind of scratch. My friends told me they’d never seen such a run of luck, which I couldn’t (and didn’t) refute. Oddly enough, my run of luck hadn’t surprised me, which, I realize, defies logic. Even when I had no more money to gamble with, I felt certain that I’d return from Tunica a winner. Never before and never since have I borrowed money from a friend to gamble. But, like Alexei Ivanovich in “The Gambler,”

“(S)ometimes the wildest thought, the seemingly most impossible thought, gets so firmly settled in your head that you finally take it for something feasible…Moreover, if the idea is combined with a strong, passionate desire, you might one day take it, finally, for something fatal, inevitable, predestined, for something that can no longer not be and not happen! Maybe there’s also something else, some combination of presentiments, some extraordinary effort of will, a self-intoxication by your own fantasy; or whatever else – I don’t know; but on that evening (which I shall never forget as long as I live) a miraculous event took place. Though it is perfectly justified arithmetically, nonetheless for me it is still miraculous. And why, why did this certainty lodge itself so deeply and firmly in me then, and now so long ago? I surely must have thought of it, I repeat to you, not as an event that might happen among others (and therefore also might not happen), but as something that simply could not fail to happen!”

Ivanovich, for his part, won 200,000 rubles while playing roulette. My winnings are a pittance when compared to that. Then again, he later experienced lows that I never suffered. Unlike Ivanovich -- a twenty-something tutor and part-time servant -- I never became addicted to gambling.
Which isn’t to say I’ve never been handed my hat.
My Tunica windfall stands as my greatest gambling experience, in terms of what I started with ($5) and where I ended up -- enough cash to keep me flush in Camels, Natural Light and Taco Bell during the summer of 1995.
But my Las Vegas humiliation (losing $500, maxing out my credit card) stands as my worst gambling experience. I lost all my money on the first night of my best friend’s three-day bachelor party. And lemme tell ya something: Staying behind in a Las Vegas hotel room while your friends take a limousine to a five-star steak house will NOT make you like yourself. After that, I didn’t play blackjack for three years. I simply didn’t trust myself. Even when my friend offered to loan me a couple hundred dollars – to play blackjack, enjoy Vegas – I couldn’t do it.
“I’m just going to blow it,” I said.
Alexei Ivanovich, for his part, probably would have accepted the offer.
In the last scene of “The Gambler,” a former friend, convinced that Ivanovich is starving, takes pity on him and gives him money for food. Ivanovich thanks him for his kindness, but when the friend leaves, Ivanovich thinks to himself, “Oh, I have a presentiment, and it cannot be otherwise! I have fifteen louis d’or now, and I began once with only fifteen guldens! If you begin cautiously…”

Cameron Martin is also a columnist for CBS Sportsline and a book reviewer and essayist for Barnes & Noble Review. Email him at [email protected]

okay so i have very different opinions for both the double and the gambler. i’d give the double a 2/5 at most and the gambler a 5/5 so im gonna log it as 4.

the double- worse version of dr jekyl and mr hyde. the ambiguous ending was interesting but it felt like it all built up to nothing and goliadkin spiraled in a way that was not at all interesting or profound in any way. painfully boring, worst of dostoevsky’s books that i’ve read.

the gambler- a great telling of how gambling continually ruins people and their lives. it shows how real the addiction is by portraying the rush of the stakes and how much more winning is than just money to gambling addicts. i feel that the reason it was so well written is dostoevsky’s own gambling addiction, i find it interesting that he could write about it in such a critical way while also succumbing to it but i also feel like that makes a lot of sense. i really enjoyed it and also the relationship between alexei and polina was super interesting and really drove the addiction kinda indirectly.

The Double begins with its main character awakening:

“…For some two minutes, however, he lay motionless on his bed, like a man who is not fully certain whether he is awake or still asleep, whether what is happening around him now is a reality or a continuation of the disordered reveries of his sleep.”

And so, appropriately, begins this humorous, sad and mind-bending tale in which it can be hard to sort fantasy from reality.

Our hero, one Yakov Petrovich Goliadkin, is a mild mannered government official, obsessed with how others view him and his social standing in general. Imagining himself to be surrounded by enemies and always on the verge of disaster, he continually attempts to justify himself, overlooking his increasingly bizarre behavior. Until, upon the evening of a major social blunder, our hero’s double appears - an embodiment of his internal struggle.

Up until this time, there have been hints of what’s coming. Goliadkin considers pretending that he is someone else who “bears a striking resemblance” to himself in order to avoid what he considers an awkward social situation. And again:

“Mr. Goliadkin looked as if he wanted to hide somewhere from himself, as if he wanted to escape somewhere from himself.”

Now our hero, “Goliadkin Sr.”, must strive against his nemesis, “Goliadkin Jr.” - who is constantly trying to undermine him and destroy his reputation.

I think we all can relate to the internal struggle in which we sabotage ourselves by doing the very things that undermine our success, relationships, health, etc. A masterpiece!

In The Gambler, Dostoevsky faces his own gambling addiction in the form of a tutor Alexei Ivanovich, traveling abroad with his employer, a general fallen on hard times and his entourage. It’s not until the end of this novella that the tutor succumbs to the hope of success offered by gambling, but even up until that point we see gambling in every aspect of this tale. The general and his hangers-on gamble on the death of grandma and the hoped for inheritance to come. Grandma has her own devastating fling with gambling. Multiple characters gamble on love, including Alexei, who, like most gamblers, don’t have the sense to walk away upon winning, but try to up the score and lose all.

A fascinating look into the soul of gambling addiction.

I am reading Dostoevsky's works in chronological order, so only read The Double. I will come back later and finish the book by reading The Gambler.

I was unfortunately thoroughly confused by The Double but I loved The Gambler

The novels were both good, don’t get me wrong. Dostoyevsky is a master at his craft. But they have much to be desired as compared to his other novels. Perhaps they both were rushed…

Regardless Dostoyevsky hit on two major issues of today (he was either ahead of his time or these issues are as old as time; I vote for the latter): mental illness and addiction. It’s interesting that the publishers of this edition bunched both novellas into one publication.

As always with a Russian Novel I find myself despising all the characters but ultimately cheering or mourning for them in the end.

Our sixth form was split into maths/science and arts. One day in the library I saw a fellow on the arts side looking at this sentence: "La Vie avec un grand V," which he'd translated as, "Life with a big V." I tapped him on the shoulder. "It's 'Life with a capital L'." But he wasn't having it, especially not from a maths/science man. "It says V, not L, Morris."

And that's how I felt about this translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky, who are the premier Russian-to-English translators of the era, according to The New Yorker. Award-winning, it says here. But they had me struggling through The Double, and maybe it's my maths/science background, but I found lines like this confusing:

"Announce me, my friend, say, thus and so, to explain. And I'll thank you well, my dear..."

Compare that to the Constance Garnett translation:

"Announce me, my friend, say something or other to explain. I’ll reward you, my good man - ”

At other times we're told that Mr Goliadkin fled "from the shower of flicks hanging over him". Mrs Garnett's translation may have been less precisely accurate, but it wouldn't leave the brain in palpitations.

In spite of that the brilliance of the novelette is undimmed. You might even argue (I'm not) that rendering Goliadkin's experiences in something that is close to but not quite comprehensible English enhances the sense of nightmare. At any rate, right up to the curiously translated final paragraph (for which, in the absence of a footnote, you'll need a degree in Russian social history) it's a completely spellbinding piece of work.

I was less captivated by The Gambler. Dostoevsky knocked it off in a month to satisfy a rapacious businessman who otherwise would have owned everything he wrote for the next nine years. I was amused by the narrator's explanations of why, when a particular number comes up at roulette a couple of times, it therefore can't come up again for a while - until I discovered that Dostoevsky was for a long time a gambling addict himself and probably believed that. So: a reliable narrator without much self-awareness fails to recognize his true love in life. It does capture a sense of addiction and panic, which probably was helped by the thought of what would happen if Dostoevsky didn't meet his deadline. The Gambler doesn't really deserve to stand alongside The Double, but there it is, bringing the average for the book down to 4 stars.

I don’t know why I wasn’t impressed with The Double the first time I read it, but on this second reading I loved it, I thought it was riotously funny. Maybe it was the translation; this time I read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, whereas the first time it was by Jessie Coulson. The story parodies all the pettiness and insidious wheedling of civil servants as well as the universal human concern with being supplanted and replaced.

The Gambler I hadn’t read before and it was, similarly, a novella and in the farcical style of Gogol. Dostoevsky captured the sickening fatalism of gambling well. It seemed an insightful psychological portrait of the gambler and had an internationalist aspect to it that I associate more with Turgenev. The stereotypes of the Russian, German, French, Polish and English nationalities fit the genre and were entertaining in their accuracy.

The Double was interesting, but too chaotic for my taste. The underlying paranoia, madness, fear made the book undigestable. Definitely very inspired by Gogol, and Dostoyevsky does capture the self beautifully, but I don't think it's his best work.
I actually really enjoyed The Gambler. Coherent and insightful. It was an awkward read in that the conclusion hurt because it was inevitable.
They both feel like precursers to his later writing style.