Notes from Underground

In 1864, Fyodor Dostoevsky took a hammer to the Enlightenment's favorite lie: that man is rational and always pursues his own advantage. From a damp room, the nameless Underground Man, literature's first anti-hero, argues that hyperconsciousness paralyzes, that twice two makes four is an insolent bully, and that we would smash the Crystal Palace simply to prove we are not piano keys. Then, at a humiliating schoolmates' dinner and in his cruelty toward Liza, the theory turns into wreckage.

You'll learn:

- Why understanding everything too well becomes a disease

- The one freedom man prizes above his own happiness

- How the Underground Man confuses love with tyranny