The scene is St. Petersburg in the mid 1800s. A clerk works in a meaningless job sporting delusions of grandeur. Everyone in his office is talking about him, and everyone is out to get him.

One thing you can say about Fyodor Dostoevsky, he can really get into the mind of the mentally ill. I recently read The Double, and I felt like I had to wash the crazy off of me every time I picked up the book. But I couldn’t stop picking it up.

The story is written in first person, so you can hear every insane thought the clerk is thinking. He is the quintessential paranoid schizophrenic, and you’re just along for the ride.

But maybe he’s not just paranoid. Maybe everyone is out to get him. Maybe I’m the one who’s losing it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.