I've been reading a lot lately, so time for another book post. Browsing the library's contemporary American section recently, I spotted Notes from Underground by Eric Bogosian (1993). I'd never heard of Bogosian before (although he wrote Talk Radio which I have on newspaper-giveaway DVD) but I was instantly hit by title, sure that it was a very famous, highly recommended book.
Turns out it is, only Dostoevsky wrote it. I only just realised this when I googled for a picture of the cover, and it came flooding back to me that we'd discussed Notes from Underground as the first existential text as part of a class on Dostoevsky's White Nights. Oops. I will have to read the 1864 story now.
Written 119 years later, Bogosian's Notes takes more from the great Russian than the title; both are written in the form of a diary by an unhappy outsider. Bogosian's underground, however, is a small flat in contemporary New York, and his outsider is addicted to cheese crackers, spying on his neighbours and watching Dan Rather on CBS News. It's very short - just 70 pages, often with only a few lines on each - and written in a conversational style that makes it easy to power through, but it is far from a comfortable read. The protagonist becomes increasingly disconnected from society and its rules. He's not at all your usual murdery torturey psychopath, but more disturbing in a way as although he does not harm anyone (except himself in a particularly gruelling scene) there seems to be no logic to his actions and you never know what he might do next. It's certainly not the best book I've read recently, but an interesting study of a character isolated and adrift in the modern world.
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