Synopsis

"Backgrounds and Sources" includes relevant writings by Dostoevsky, among them "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions," the author’s account of a formative trip to the West. New to the Second Edition are excerpts from V. F. Odoevksy’s "Russian Nights" and I. S. Turgenev’s "Hamlet of Shchigrovsk District." In "Responses", Michael Katz links this seminal novel to the theme of the underground man in six famous works, two of them new to the Second Edition: an excerpt from M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Swallows, Woody Allen’s Notes from the Overfed, Robert Walser’s The Child, an excerpt from Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, an excerpt from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, and an excerpt from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Erostratus. "Criticism" brings together eleven interpretations by both Russian and Western critics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, two of them new to the Second Edition. Included are essays by Nikolai K. Mikhailovsky, Vasily Rozanov, Lev Shestov, M. M. Bakhtin, Ralph E. Matlaw, Victor Erlich, Robert Louis Jackson, Gary Saul Morson, Richard H. Weisberg, Joseph Frank, and Tzvetan Todorov. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Booknews

This revised Norton Critical Edition is based on Michael Katz's translation of the 1863 novel, which is introduced and annotated specifically for English-speaking readers. After the complete text of the novel, a section on background and sources offers selections from Dostoevsky's letters to his brother, some of his writings on socialism and Christianity and on his trip to the West, and excerpts from writings by Dostoevsky's contemporaries. A section on responses offers parodies and works of imitation by writers including Woody Allen, Ralph Ellison, and Jean-Paul Sartre. There are also critical interpretations by both Russian and Western critics from the 19th and 20th centuries. Includes a chronology. Katz teaches Russian at Middlebury College. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Biography

Michael R. Katz, is C. V. Starr Professor of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. He is the author of The Literary Ballad in Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Dreams and the Unconscious in Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction. He has translated and edited the Norton Critical Editions of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Children. He has also translated Alexander Herzen’s Who Is to Blame?, N. G. Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?, Dostoevsky’s Devils, Druzhinin’s Polinka Saks, Artsybashev’s Sanin, and Jabotinsky’s The Five.