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This novella (The Double) is a provocative exploration of sanity, sense of self, and perception. Dostoyevsky cleverly employs mirrors to focus one's contemplation on self-reflection, and when the dust all settles, nothing is truly certain. Who is the doppelganger? Who is crazy? The beauty of this book is that the answers to these questions and more can be lengthily discussed, debated, considered and, ultimately, reserved for another read and another discussion.

I read this book as a part of Another Look Book Club, put on by Stanford University. The focus is on oft-overlooked, not-as-well-known classics which are short (<200pp). The discussion panel for this book included a Russian ex-pat, a Russian Literature professor and a Stanford Literature Professor. The discussion was lively and thought provoking, especially because each discussant had his/her own perspective and often it disagreed sharply with the others' perspectives. If you have a chance to look at the video of the discussion, you may enjoy it.

Although I would not necessarily argue that this is Dostoevsky's best novel, it nevertheless is my favorite. It is short and relatively uncomplicated. A man who is so insecure that he constantly places himself in situations where he knows he is going to be slighted and insulted finally projects a copy of himself into what he thinks is the real world. This copy or "double" of himself, however, is very comfortable in polite society, is well liked and promoted at work. The double is a hallucination on the part of "Mr. Golyadkin," but he fits into every facet of the protagonist's life, at first humble and friendly, later mocking and undermining, and finally part of Mr. Golyadkin's total moral destruction. The Double has many points in common with the unnamed narrator of Notes from Underground who elevates man's habit of acting against his own best interests practically to a religion. This narrator is also undone by forcing himself on people who he knows will reject him.

This book is not easy to read and i suspect that is the point. the main character is losing his mind and you get a front row seat. if you ever had a conversation with a mentally ill person think how long did that last? Now imagine being in that person's head. Not something you would do for fun.
I'd rather watch an adapted movie.

These two stories lack some of the depth and detail of Dostoevsky's more famous novels but that doesn't mean they aren't both worth reading. They're a lot different than his other work and in many ways are more accessible because they're less complex.

This book is fantastic. I love Dostoyevsky's somber humor. Can't wait to re-read. Highly recommend.

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.