Vintage The Adolescent

Many say this is Dostoevsky’s least liked novel. I would disagree. Just because it’s different than his others is not a reason to discount it. On the contrary, it’s difference is what makes the book that much more exciting and enjoyable to read. You get to see a slightly different Dostoevsky but with many of the same themes of his main works…as a usual the quality of the hardback is incredible. I was luckily to find an untouched, shrink wrapped copy. Easily the most beautiful I have found and I own all Dostoevsky with this particular publisher’s hardcovers

Book was in great condition.

"The Adolescent" is often considered a somewhat lesser accomplishment than others of Dostoevsky's late novels, a la Auden's late poems or Picasso's late paintings. Not quite so! Merely, he was writing in a different vein--from the perspective of the "raw youth." Hence its unique appeal--and the tendency to misread it. I found this novel a vital constituent in the late bouquet of works and highly recommend it to anyone who wishes to appreciate one more of the many facets of this grand master of prose.

I’ve been reading Dostoyevsky for over thirty years and it still amazes me that it’s taken me so long to track down this novel. I read all the better known novels some time around 1988 and I’ve reread them all at least once or twice since, along with the novellas, short stories and diaries. I confess to being a big fan of Dostoyevsky, despite his problematic side. What’s that problematic side? Anti-semitic, anti-Polish and, for some people most problematic of all, the shift from idealistic socialist to curmudgeonly conservative. The saving grace in Dostoyevsky’s case is that it took a firing squad and years of forced labour in Siberia to wring the idealism out of him. Unlike many writers from relatively privileged backgrounds, Dostoyevsky did experience genuine hardship and suffering, and that’s one thing I do admire about him.Anyway, I finally tracked down a copy of this novel that I’d never read before. The narrator and central character is Arkady Dolgoruky, a young man with what must have been an unusual background by Victorian standards. Not only is he illegitimate, his mother is married to a man – Dolgoruky – who has given him his surname and patronymic, but his real father is someone else entirely. He has a younger sister in the same situation (same father and mother) and an older half-brother and half-sister (same father, different mother) and they’re both legitimate. To add to the hero’s woes, the man who gave him his name is a former serf but people associate the name Dolgoruky with a noble family. So when he introduces himself as Dolgoruky, they often say, “Prince Dolgoruky?” Eventually he comes to delight in saying words to the effect of, “No, I’m a bastard and the Dolgorukys I belong to are the peasant branch.”The novel is essentially about an abandoned son trying to discover who and what his real father is and yearning to form a filial relationship with him. This is Dostoyevsky of course. His father, Versilov, is a strange one. Amoral, a womaniser, some kind of liberal idealist (or liberal when it comes to his own behaviour). It soon becomes very doubtful whether young Arkady is ever going to understand this man, or be understood by him. As usual Dostoyevsky makes use of all the props and themes of Victorian melodrama: secret documents whose contents could destroy a family, swindlers and con artists, eavesdropping, corrupt servants who betray their masters….What raises this novel from melodrama to work of genius is Dostoyevsky’s fascination for mental illness, self-destruction, honour and truth and the way he presents them as the bedrock of our humanity. If you’ve enjoyed The Idiot or The Devils, you’ll love this.I normally read Dostoyevsky in Penguin Classics editions (they have commissioned at least two newer translations of Crime and Punishment since I first read it, and one of The Brothers Karamazov) but for some mystifying reason they have never touched this novel, so I had to settle for the hardback edition from the Everyman Library. This is an American translation, but despite that it generally reads well. There is an informative introduction and a useful set of footnotes.

The Adolescent must, in my opinion, be acknowledged one of Dostoevsky's masterpieces. The Adolescent, Dostoevsky's second-to-last novel, stands on par with The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Crime & Punishment, Devils, and Notes from Underground.It difficult for me to understand why some critics have dismissed The Adolescent as a substandard work, or, as is the case in some instances, why others have omitted entirely a discussion of the novel in their critical works.The plot centers around the narrator Arkady, who, having graduated from High-School, arrives in Petersburg to become acquainted for the first time with Petersburg society, as well as with his biological family, with whom he had had very little contact with since the days if his early childhood. Arkady is an illegitimate son: his father a nobleman; his mother a former household serf.Adding to the drama is the fact that when Arkady arrives in Petersburg he has with him a sought-after document that could be used to extort and control several important people. One such person is the beautiful and enchanting Katerina Nikolaevna, with whom Arkady and his father, Verislov are both madly in love.Similar to all of Dostoevsky's great novels, the greatness of The Adolescent is not in the actually plot, but rather, is a result of the deeply insightful, brutally honest and endlessly fascinating portrayal of man and society.The most noticeable difference in The Adolescent is the narrative form. The novel is written in the first-person, expressing the point of view of the Adolescent himself.Another difference in The Adolescent is that it does not contain the absolute forms of personality-types that are prominent in the other major novels. This is true more for Arkady than for Verislov. Instead one finds layered hybrids and a more ordinaryAs a result of these differences -- which, by the way, I consider to be a great strength of this novel -- one will find that the character of the adolescent (that is, of Arkady Makarovich Dolgoruky) offers the most in-depth, most layered, and above all the most realistic psychological portrait of Dostoevsky's entire literary output. In Arkady one finds traces of a number of Dostoevskian character-types, i.e.: the Underground Man, Prince Myshkin, and Aloysha Karamazov. Yet, unlike those characters, Arkady is a much more ordinary, familiar and altogether realistic character in terms of both his personality and the circumstances in which he is to observed.If you are new to Dostoevsky, I recommend starting with Crime and Punishment and then moving on to The Brothers Karamazov. If you enjoyed those books and find yourself left wanting more, then The Adolescent, in my opinion, would be a good place to turn and is sure to be an enjoyable and memorable reading experience.