"There's no plot. There's no conflict. There's no antagonist."

[intertribal]

Reading Query Shark led me to realize that I did not know what Ilium's "conflict" was.

That can't be good.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know what Notes from Underground's conflict was, so I wouldn't put conflict as the principle around which a story is built. Just saying.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, this is one of those rare literary works that contains a protagonist I identify with, in part.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it. The only thing by the Russian novelists that I've read is The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I uh...read the first part and the end of Notes from Underground (thereby managing to skip almost the entire 'story' part), and I think the character is at once similar to and quite different from myself. He's...similar to me in the way the pfsc comic I posted is similar to me.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

"(thereby managing to skip almost the entire 'story' part)"

LOL

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

story is all in Part II. i didn't do it intentionally, more like i was pressed for time and then never came back to it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I wonder what you'd think of the story then, or if your opinion overall would change.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

given that i've read the ending...probably not. i mean, it definitely changed my impression of the character, and i think it has more nietzsche-esque psychological insights to reveal, but it's still very much focused on the same basic things, and thus i doubt would change my overall opinion much.

btw, part I is told in character, even though it's not narrative. if you hadn't already assumed that from what i'd said (which you probably have)

from the wikipedia link

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

The Underground Man became a common character type in many of the works that followed the novella. He is present in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in the milder form of the character Nikolai Levin, in Anton Chekhov's Ward No. 6, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 as Yossarian the 28-year-old Army Air Corps Captain, and in Richard Wright's short story The Man Who Lived Underground.

Like many of Dostoevsky's novels, Notes from Underground was unpopular with Soviet literary critics due to its explicit rejection of socialist utopianism and its portrait of humans as irrational, uncontrollable, and uncooperative. His claim that human needs can never be satisfied even through technological progress, also goes against Marxist beliefs. Many existentialist critics, notably Jean-Paul Sartre, considered the novel to be a forerunner of existentialist thought and an inspiration to their own philosophies.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was very impressed with Dostoevsky, claiming that "Dostoevsky is one of the few psychologists from whom I have learned something," and that Notes from Underground "cried truth from the blood."[citation needed]

Re: from the wikipedia link

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

actually, from the wikipedia link, i think i made it to somewhere around the beginning of the second segment of the second part...not that it matters much, but you know i'm neurotic about accuracy.

Re: from the wikipedia link

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I know.

Re: from the wikipedia link

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Yossarian, huh? (I still can't believe that I thought Catch-22 was set in space based on what you copied for me to read... interesting that I always forget about that book nowadays)

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

note: i assumed here that you meant overall opinion of the book, rather than the character.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

yeah, I think that is what I meant. Although I think I also wonder about your overall opinion of the character.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

he seems to be more vengeful and petty than me. lol. i, who am high and mighty.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

tbh, it's been too long for me to give a well thought-out response.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

oh, well, don't worry about that.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

part I is told in character... and the ending is not?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

er...hm, i don't remember for certain, but i think they're both first person. just Part I is like the character writing his notes on society, and Part II is the character living his life.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah. No doubt that book would fail many publishing houses today... but I still remember the little ads you gave me about Gift of the Magi and something else being turned down by contemporary publishing houses for inane reasons.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

what? i remember giving you little things about publishing, but i have no recollection of what they said

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

They were like "what if O Henry was trying to get published today?" (can't remember the other one - Twain?) with a rejection letter that said, you know, this is way too short, or some other criticism that seems entirely irrelevant now.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

heh, that is possibly one of the better short satirical/pithy things i ran across and liked at the time.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

the... ad? or Gift of the Magi?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

the ad

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

i had a recent look through old drawers and papers...in my preteen years, i seem to have had a preoccupation with short, quote-worthy statements of a anti-mainstream bent. most of them are embarrassing now.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*an

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

aw, I think it's cute.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

why?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

It shows that you already had the inclination to challenge the mainstream.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

...i guess. but in such a stupid way! ('we all have to start somewhere', yeah, yeah...but it should have been earlier!)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

at age what? 5?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

yes.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

it's possible you may not have even had a sense of what mainstream was at age 5, you know. I don't think I did.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

well, not age 5, but i shouldn't have so easily grasped on to the pop imitation of anti-mainstream ideals so late into my teenage years!

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

be glad you started at all!

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Nah, yeah, I know. It's about querying it to an agent or a publishing house.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

ah, i see