I continue on the #yearofdostoevsky and finally have arrived at the first Dostoevsky I have not read! The Double was written and published right before young Dostoevskys infamous mock-execution in the year of our Lord, 1846.

The major theme we get to explore is this interval split between our self-image and the truth. In other words - our idealized self vs. our actual self.

Dostoevsky gently and humorously directs this story at the beginning making our “hero” (Golyadkin) to have some very similar character traits as other characters that appear again in novels… Mr. Golyadkin is buffoonish and cares way too much about what other people think of him and goes to great lengths to keep up appearances. As the story continues particular from the second half onwards the story gets a bit darker and we start to understand that Dostoevsky wants us to explore this side of humanity that we all have this bit of madness within us too. Dostoevsky was greatly criticized for this novel with critics and readers feeling like exploring madness for madness sake was unproductive. The thing is that Dostoevsky was greatly misunderstood in this novel - this portrayal of a consciousness totally saturated with the formulas and slogans of its society allowed us to dig deeper. Dostoevsky wanted us to empathize with Golyadkin and see that maybe we all have a bit of him in us.


The Gambler is a fascinating story told of a man who almost seems mistakenly caught up in the world of gambling. It almost happens by accident but then he ends up getting fully immersed. We see him deny his poetic self but the way he gambles himself is very poetic. There is no rhyme or reason it just happens. My favorite character was grandma… I think some translators called her auntie but I prefer the image in my head as grandma. As usual with Dostoevsky every character is very complex and we always seem to side with the one who causes the most trouble. We are given almost this God like stance of sympathy for human kind and I think that invigorates those of us who feel weighed down by pain from this world.

So... these are my first of Dostoevsky's novellas outside of, I suppose, Notes.... it was really nice to feel the power of his prose in such a confined space, and it was quite enlightening to read two stories that were so separated chronologically. It seemed obvious to me that The Double was the product of a mind not yet fully comfortable with its abilities and direction while The Gambler had every bit of the assured philosophical weight I've come to expect from Dostoevsky. So while I fully enjoyed The Double it never affected me in quite the same way the rest of his catalog has while The Gambler felt like rejoining a conversation with an old friend.

The Double allowed me, I believe for the very first time, to actually guess the ending before I got there. The story itself was a fairly straight-forward dream within a dream sort of tale that definitely disorients the reader but is also very clear in its direction. Dostoevsky made it incredibly easy to (if not impossible not to) put myself squarely in the shoes of Mr. Goliadkin from the moment he chose to attempt to enter society sans invitation. His pain, his loneliness, his fear, and his desperation were all palpable, pointed, and poignant. I can't count the number of times I've put myself in similar situations and desperately wanted nothing more than to fade into the walls of the hallway or squeeze into the mouse hole in the wood pile. I am incredibly jealous that such a young author could evoke such emotion from simple words on a page in only his second attempt at his craft...

Dammit.

Because I too wonder why "I do not possess the secret of a lofty, powerful style, a solemn style, so as to portray all these beautiful and instructive moments of human life, arranged as if on purpose to prove how virtue sometimes triumphs over ill intention, freethinking, vice, and envy!"

Instead, I shall remain envious and hope that it is true that "everything will come in its turn if you have the gumption to wait."

And I shall wait. Which is sometimes what I felt I was doing during the delirium phase of this book. It felt like the ending was such a foregone conclusion that it was often difficult to observe poor Mr. Goliadkin walking through the fire. The language kept me on the edge of my seat hoping and praying that something magical would happen, but mostly I was just frustrated. In a way it felt a lot like reading Flowers for Algernon watching someone slowly slip into a madness from which there was obviously no escape. The faces all eventually fade away…

And then there is The Gambler. While it was mildly difficult to go into this without considering the metacontext in which this story was created, I tried my best to allow these characters to stand on their own and outside the existence of their creator. I think it is a testament to Dostoevsky’s abilities that it was incredibly easy to get sucked into this story while leaving whatever I knew of the author behind…

So if this isn’t a story about the author, who is it about? Who is the eponymous Gambler and what are the stakes? Ostensibly Alexei Ivanovich is the gambler… and he is simply gambling for money or perhaps for the thrill. This notion of the gambler’s identity is quickly challenged when we learn that Alexei sits down to the table for the first time only at the behest of Polina, the object of his unrequited love. Shortly thereafter it seems we are to believe that it is in fact the Grandmother who inspires the title of the story only, in the end, to be shown again that it is Alexei. One of the primary reasons I love Dostoevsky is his ability to make *me* the main character in his stories though, and that holds true here as well… Given that, I have to believe that the gambler is universal, it is you, and it is me.

Yet I don’t particularly care for the thrill of winning or losing money or possessions on bets, and it is here that I found the depth in this story through the eyes of Alexei as the gambler. As prominent as the idea of money was throughout the story, it was not central to Alexei’s existence - his true gamble was on Polina, his ability to love her, and his belief that she could or would also love him. This is why I needed to get outside of Dostoevsky’s world and into the world of the story… I do not know that I could have seen this so clearly with the specter of his own gambling problems looming over my interpretations of the book. Alexei gambled that Polina would not take advantage of his offer to prostrate himself to whatever her wishes may be. And he was wrong. He gambled that she would see his love for her in his continued trips back and forth to the gambling hall for her. He was wrong. He gambled that he could buy her love in one grand gesture as threw everything he had at her feet… and he was wrong.

Eventually, as I suppose is inevitable, he succumbed to the emotional debts he accumulated at fortune’s wheel and lost himself in the “…champagne quite often, because [he] was very sad and extremely bored all the time.” In giving up, Alexei gambled again. This time he gambled that the ball would never land on zero and that his heart was fated to remain in solitude. And he was wrong again. Although it seems as though he was too far gone by the time Astley finally showed him Polina’s true feelings, his number did come up. Alexei, too late, arrived at his conclusion that, “one turn of the wheel, and everything changes.”

My optimistic side wants to say that the takeaway is to never stop betting on your heart, but I know that can lead to ruin and you must, at some point, change your bet if you are ever to win. I want to be as fatalistic as Alexei who, “loves without hope” and “loves [Polina] more every day” despite the “unbearable pain of being without [her].” In reality, however, the wheel only turns a finite number of times for each of us. Red or black, high or low, even or odd, the only thing we can know for sure is that the wheel will eventually stop spinning.

But we are emotional creatures. So as long as the payoff is out there, I’d rather keep betting on my heart and betting *for* people and *for* love and *for* the things I feel fated to have or to be. Gamble often, gamble wisely, but always bet on the thing you love.

I'm making my rounds with all of Dostoevsky's works at this point and only have a few more to go. The Double is one of his earliest stories and is one of his weirdest (I skipped The Gambler as that has been already read, but this was the only copy of The Double available at my library). The idea of this novel is quite simple, what if someone that looked exactly like you started taking your job, your friends, your money, and eventually your entire life? Well, that's exactly what Dostoevsky explores in this novel, and boy is it scary to think about. Our main character quickly finds himself getting odd looks from people around town and weird rumors circulating around work for fiendish things he apparently has done, and only later realizes that he has a double. He eventually sees him in the middle of the street, but has a hard time digesting the reality of the situation. He thinks he is just seeing things, but eventually meets him multiple times and even has conversations with him, and realizes that nope he was right the first time. He attempts to reason with his Double, negotiate with him, accosts him, and even attempts to befriend him, but no matter which method he tries, the double always backstabs him and finds a way to benefit himself alone.

One of my favorite scenes, and what summarizes a lot of his interactions with others based on his Double, is where he attempts to get a pie to make himself a bit happier in the midst of all this. He goes to the vendor, orders his pie, almost finishes it and goes to pay, and the guy tells him it will be some exorbitant fee. He freaks out and is confused when the guy says but you bought 11 pies sir, and immediately he sees his double in a nearby alleyway finishing off the last of his pies and running off. The whole premise and image it evokes in my mind makes me laugh every time.

The story culminates in what is assumed to be our hero's exile from his own country, as he is lured to a massive party, surrounded on all sides by others, and pushed off into a wagon to go to a new land. In theory, sealing his double as the new him. Overall great novel, but only loses a point due to Dostoevsky's (or maybe my own for him) lofty standards. There are portions that tend to creep along and not add much to our narrative.

I really enjoyed the first half of “The Double” after that everything became boring and made no sense to me, I am not sure what caused that but maybe because I left it unread for 5 months and then went back to it really made me lose interest, so I'm hoping this will not make me get disappointed with others works of Dostoevsky.