Notes from Underground

by Roger Scruton

Set in the twilight years of the Czechoslovak communist regime, recalled from the suburbs of Washington, this novel describes a doomed love affair between two young people trapped by the system. Roger Scruton evokes a world in which every word and gesture bears a double meaning, as people seek to find truth amid the lies and love in the midst of betrayal. The novel tells the story of Jan Reichl, condemned to a menial life by his father's alleged crime, and of Betka, the girl who offers him education, opportunity and love, but who mysteriously refuses to commit herself.

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy, Historical Fiction, Ebooks

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Sir Roger Scruton was a writer and philosopher who has published more than forty books in philosophy, aesthetics and politics. He was a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He taught in both England and America and was a Visiting Professor at Department of Philosophy and Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C.

In 2015 he published two books, The Disappeared and later in the autumn, Fools Frauds and Firebrands. Fools Frauds and Firebrands is an update of Thinkers of the New Left published, to widespread outrage, in 1986. It includes new chapters covering Lacan, Deleuze and Badiou and some timely thoughts about the historians and social thinkers who led British intellectuals up the garden path during the last decades, including Eric Hobsbawm and Ralph Miliband.

In 2016 he again published two books, Confessions of A Heretic (a collection of essays) and The Ring of Truth, about Wagner’s Ring cycle, which was widely and favourably reviewed. In 2017 he published On Human Nature (Princeton University Press), which was again widely reviewed, and contains a distillation of his philosophy. He also published a response to Brexit, Where We Are (Bloomsbury).

Reviews

[Takuto Sato · Rating 4 out of 5]

75% into the book I realized that I picked up this book by mistake; I meant to read the book of the same title by Dostoyevsky.

Despite the mixup, I really enjoyed Scruton's Notes from Underground.

(more review to come later)

[Mauro · Rating 3 out of 5]

You half-expect, when you get a Roger S. book, that it will be didactic and supportive of his conservative point-of-view.

Notes from U., a work of fiction, does not disappoint that half-expectation: Roger S. uses his personal experience with the urderground Prague of the 80s and the result resembles, for that time and place, what Grahan G.'s The Third Man is for the 50's Vienna.

It is a good story, that takes Prague as a tantalizing background, but lacks something: sometimes the text reminds you of an excessive exercise in creative writing - metaphors are a bit too direct and sometimes the characters description is kind of Barbara Cartland-ish (I should point that I only know that because when I was younger I made some money translating one of her books into Portuguese).

But what is really good about Notes From U. is, first, the musical and literary references (that is the supine advantage of conservative writers; they always reccomend interesting further readings, and Roger S. also incluses further listening). Second: the book is not a bit moralising and the final result is really bitter (I would say bittersweet but no: it is only bitter. Good bitter, but bitter. And us conservatives really do have a taste for Negronis and Camparis).

In short, it gets to the conclusion that being a conservative is not as easy as it may sound, for life keeps getting in the way.

[Zak Schmoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes from Underground is a romance set in the world of lies. However, the romance is also symbolic of that world. Secrets, unknown elements, and suspicion cloud Jan's vision of the beautiful life he ultimately wants to share with Betka. However, these elements are exactly the same things that cloud the beautiful life that all could have in Czechoslovakia without the tyranny of the communist government that was always watching, always listening, and always willing to imprison.

This novel brings the reader a true realization of what it means to attempt to live in truth in a world where lies are in command.

[Lucas Magrini Rigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente livro. A descrição da atmosfera totalitária fica muito vívida ao longo do livro. Isso dá um tom de suspense à história.
Outro fato marcante é o paralelo que é possível traçar entre essa Tchecolsováquia e o Brasil de hoje referente à exclusão das grandes obras literárias e música. É evidente que no Brasil não é necessária uma imprensa clandestina para ter acesso a esses livros, mas observo que não é natural que essas obras cheguem à mão das pessoas. É necessário um esforço a mais.
Apesar das 300 páginas é uma leitura rápida. O texto flui bem.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captivating novel elegantly written about a Czech author and his life during that nation's communist captivity.

[William Younger · Rating 5 out of 5]

The late great Sir Roger Scruton’s “Notes from Underground”, named after Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground”, is a beautifully written short novel set around 1985 mostly in Prague Czechoslovakia six years before the fall of the iron curtain. Roger Scruton had first-hand knowledge of Prague and its underground networks during this time as he actively supported them.
From Wikipedia:
“From 1979 to 1989, Scruton was an active supporter of dissidents in Czechoslovakia under Communist Party rule, forging links between the country's dissident academics and their counterparts in Western universities. As part of the Jan Hus Educational Foundation, he and other academics visited Prague and Brno, now in the Czech Republic, in support of an underground education network started by the Czech dissident Julius Tomin, smuggling in books, organizing lectures, and eventually arranging for students to study for a Cambridge external degree in theology (the only faculty that responded to the request for help). There were structured courses and samizdat translations, books were printed, and people sat exams in a cellar with papers smuggled out through the diplomatic bag.”

The novel is narrated by the main character Jan Reichl from the position of his disappointing future life safe and at liberty in America, looking back on the days of Soudruh Androš (Comrade Underground), his Pen-Name during the time he was an Author and, along with his mother, a distributer of samizdat literature in Prague and living a life underground, in fear of the StB (the state security police) and in fear of everyone around him just like almost everyone else.
Jan rides the underground metro, subtly people watching and writes the lives he has imagined for the expressionless passengers in his book “Rumours”. The book, as well as his own stupidity, gets his mother arrested, causes a beautiful, secretive and intellectually superior woman to fall in love with him against her better judgement, and eventually grants him his present position teaching at an American college.
Jan exists in his “underground”, the state of mind that imposes solitude, fear, anxiety and deceit upon itself. Jan like almost everyone else in Prague barely acknowledges other people. Anyone who isn’t someone your supposed to be talking to, such as your boss or your family is best ignored in case of looking suspicious. The result is a self-centeredness and a self-isolation that creeps into even your close relationships, you find out in the novel that there is a lot that Jan does not know about his mother despite them living together.
Betka, Jans lover and guide throughout the novel, drags him out of the underground in his mind and up into the light to search for and attempt to confront the truth. Ironically this new world he enters is the politically dissident underground, filled with Samizdat networks, unofficial priests and underground lecture rooms. Betka however seems to exist with just a foot in this new world and a foot outside of it creating a deliberate and seemingly self-serving distance from Jan, and the mystery of her plays constantly on his anxious and suspicious mind not yet completely rid of its underground shackles.
Jan and Betkas story is an exploration of meaning, Jan who was miserable in the beginning in a state of oppression and scarcity is almost as miserable at the end in the land of liberty and plenty. He looks back on the time in between, with Betka, as the most meaningful part of his life where he learned, loved pledged vows before God and rediscovered the forbidden arts of Czechs past cultural influencers, their great artists writers and composers.
I noticed five core ideas that I think are explored as sources of meaning in the book:
1. Truth
2. Home
3. Love
4. Suffering
5. Christ
Truth in the book is expressed as a way of life more than objective fact, Betka causes Jan to realise his underground life is a lie, and it is a lie lived for the completely selfish purpose of self-preservation. It takes the whole book for Jan to stop lying to himself and other people, and this selfishness causes him to miss noticing important things about other people, specifically Betka.

Roger Scruton vividly illustrates the importance of language, culture, community, and local knowledge, these are things that create an idea of home and all things that are supressed in the communist regime. The Czech language is used throughout the book to highlight its importance. The atmosphere in the underground lectures is described as the solidarity of the shattered, people who are broken from their past cultural heritage and trying to regain it together. The leader of this group Rudolf finds it impossible to reconcile his vision of the post-soviet he is fighting for, to what it becomes; he spent his life trying to revive traditional Czech literature against the communist machine only to watch the western capitalist popular culture machine contaminate the country once it gains freedom, this leaves him bitter and resentful. Bekta takes Jan to her home, they enjoy the local wildlife and flora together and Bekta teaches him the names of the plants and insects, for me this drew parallels to Adam naming Gods creations in the garden, as well as the importance of names being a literary theme in many other books. How can we be considered stewards of the land if we do not even care to know the wildlife and plants by their names? All of this builds a picture of what it means to “be” at home.
When it comes to love, there are four main relationships in the book that I can think of that show many kinds of love and Scruton also describes many negative unloving relationships as opposites in contrast to them. It is far too broad a subject to list out the important details of the different relationships, but the contrast in the novel is clear as far as Jan is concerned, he spent the book building these loving relationships, and from our unhappy narrators present place in America he has none of them.
Much is said in the book about suffering and Christianity. Suffering is a fundamental truth of human existence and just as Christ embodies all truth He shows us the truth of suffering, the passage below is taken from the book page 88 in chapter 10:

“I spontaneously resonated to Father Pavel’s message. He described the supernatural as an everyday presence, folded into the scheme of things like the lining of a coat. The Christian religion, he said, is not refuted by suffering, but uses suffering to make sense of the world. And he added a thought that surprised me, not because it was at odds with what I knew, but because it fitted my experience so exactly. God, he said, could be present among us only if He first divests himself of power. To enter this world dressed in the power that created it would be to threaten us all with destruction. Hence God enters in secret. He is the truly powerless one, whose role is to suffer and forgive. That is the meaning of the sacrifice, in which the body and blood of the Redeemer are shared among his killers. Those thoughts astonished me, not because they led me to adopt Father Pavel’s faith, but because they wrapped all that had happened to me—Dad, Mother, my life underground, and Betka too—in a single idea, the very idea that Mother had chosen as the name of her press. And it is this that I appreciated most in Father Pavel—that his religion was not an escape from suffering but a way of accepting it. The supermarket heavens of my new neighbors, which draw a veil over suffering and therefore make no sense of it or of anything else, take me back to those beautiful, terrible days, when our dear city turned in its sleep and its dreams were dreams of a crucified God. As we left the little church, I asked Father Pavel whether he had suffered much in prison. “Oh no,” he said, “those were happy times. When you lose your worldly power you gain power of another kind. Those who have only worldly power are truly the powerless ones.” I shrugged my shoulders at this but, as we walked away from the church towards the Main Station, where he had a train to catch, Father Pavel spoke about his time in prison. His conversation moved quietly and with great calm strides above the mountaintops, touching on faith, sacrifice, and freedom, never mentioning those great things by name, but simply lifting my eyes to them, as they are lifted by the dawn. In prison he had lived among common criminals; but he had also found himself working side by side with a few of our nation’s best, people who had been placed there for their virtues and not for their sins. It had been a university of the heart, and around him were people who had been seeking what he had found, and who had the knowledge and will to convey it. I came away from this conversation in a state of astonishment, and each evening thereafter I would read in Mother’s Bible, trying to reconstruct the person who had written in its margins.”

This is one of my favourite extracts from the book, Roger Scruton has explained this point on suffering better than I ever could, it clearly states that without suffering we have no sense of anything, making everything meaningless and I think that’s true. Even modern pop culture has made this observation in films like “The Matrix”, humans cannot exist in any meaningful way without suffering.
It is difficult to detach the conversation about Christ from the conversation about suffering, but interestingly Jan accepts one and not the other. Throughout the book Roger Scruton shows a deep knowledge of Christianity through Father Pavel and makes very strong arguments to Jan. Jan is not converted and it seems as though Christianity via Father Pavel is presented as a parallel path to the one Jan opts to take instead with Betka, as he is unable to believe that Christianity is not based on a fiction even as he’s confessing himself to Father Pavel in church.
The Novel is a deep investigation into meaning and its source, it very critical of western liberal capitalism and its doctrine of human rights as well as the Utopian Materialist ideals of the soviet communists, and it also has criticisms for Christianity although those are subtle, we see in the novel that Betka actively steers Jan toward her way and warns about giving Father Pavel too much power over him. The argument I took from the book is that to live a meaningful life, we must not allow the outside world to make us fearful, selfish or cruel all of these things are choices whether they look that way or not, Betka showed Jan he to option to come up from underground. Then we must figure out where we are, where we came from and where we are going and take the hardships as part of the journey whether those are hardships forced on us from an oppressive state, or hardships of circumstance it doesn’t matter as without the suffering the whole journey is meaningless, freedom is as much a curse as oppression without an active effort of self-discovery, and when you have lost purpose the selfishness, isolation and self-doubt creeps back in and you have to start all over again. It is interesting that the one person we do not see at the end of the book is Father Pavel, everyone else except Betka is miserable and/or aimless, and Jan imagines he sees Father Pavel in a similar state, but it turns out not to be him “and that this last image from a vanished world was just another fiction, born of my need”, maybe suggesting that he needed to believe Father Pavel was as lost as him now the struggle was over. But for us Christ gives us a lifelong purpose and we will always have more to give to him and that will shield us from the disappointment of ultimate success and the realisation that comes with it that now either all that is left is suffering, or if our work has alleviated the threat of any real suffering all that is left is meaninglessness.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interestingly, both Sir Roger's "major" novels written in his last decade get the same score on Goodreads and the same number of reviews or ratings! I read Sir Roger's other "major" novel just after this, "The Disappeared." I found "Notes" slightly less successful. This demonstrated not only his firsthand knowledge of pre-1989 Czech society but his attempt to craft a story in the line of much intellectual Central European fiction. More successful as a novel about ideas than the characters who embody them, still, it offered deep thought and insightful reflections that dazzled. At times, especially at the start, it reached a five-star level, and it was a strong "four re

But unlike his other novel, "Notes" stumbles a bit in opening up the inner lives of its figures. Betka, the narrator's desired lover, never quite came fully alive for me. Scruton succeeded more with Pavel; it would have been worthwhile for the arc to have looked deeper into his ultimate situation where the protagonist witnesses him, for Scruton's central figure is given to elide what teases the reader into wanting more. Still, for a remarkable, Dostoevsky-ian conversation between the two main men, and the exploration of belief, love, aesthetics, academic poses, and the "human rights industry," a topic that probably no other "semi-popular" writer had tackled before with such expertise, "Notes" like its namesake strives to convey a tale of convictions amidst betrayals and loss. Exile, God and his absence, the capitulation of the soulless masses to conform under dictatorship, the twists that the "heroic dissidents" and "weary cynics" (both phrases ironically deployed) undergo, and the constant pressure to give in to subtle persuasion as well as brutal force show the postwar realm in which East tried to keep out the West, while playing on its weakness.

If the late philosopher had aspired, like Iris Murdoch maybe, to combine a career of fiction with one of scholarship, I bet he'd have written powerful and increasingly assured imaginative work. Of course, he spent his life writing furiously t an amazing rate of productivity, but fiction remained his sideline, and only in his last decade did he create his two "major" (if minor in impact in the awareness of the world) novels. And both novels offer readers much to ponder and contemplate.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book raises some good points--such as the fact that those who are made into celebrities will be treated more leniently or fairly by those in power due to outside pressure and risk of embarrassment--overall, it's just one long, emphatic wheeze in which the effort is clear but the execution is painful.

Like in Dostoevsky, the characters are set up as representations of certain ideas. And then they talk about them. And talk about them. And go on talking about them, with nary a pause for breath. Jan, the hapless, helpless, romance-motivated main character is the vessel into which all characters pour their ideas. Jan (yawn) is more prop than actor, and for as little as he cares about his mother's arrest, it is a question whether this incident is even a necessary plot point.

While the writing itself is of good quality, logical and lyrical at once, and the descriptions of Prague vivid for anyone who has visited there, much of it has the mark of "trying too hard." Themes are pounded throughout with a mallet, the opinions of the author shine through in a patronizing way, and the name-dropping of places feels self-conscious.

Finally, the whining a the end about liberal professors is worthy of an eye-roll.

[Joel Zartman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profound, luminous, not cheap, satisfying. I read it almost all at one go.

[Hasanthi Navaratne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roger Scruton's book - Notes from Underground, is a book of history. Well I am not a history person. So the story was a bit confusing to me, since I was not aware about the background of the country and it's history all together the scenario of the story.

The story unwinds in the old age of Czechoslovak about young man named Jan Reichi. His doomed love story which is imprisoned by the system. Jan Reichi is denounced for his father's claimed crime. Betka, the whom young girl Jan falls in love, offers him education, opportunity and love but she refuses to commit herself.

Jan understands that truth evades when you search for it, but it will appear when you least expect it to be out there. Father Pavel, the priest of the underground church opens a new chapter of Jan's life through faith.

The story comes to tragic ending. Personally I was not impressed by the story because I am not familiar with the system and culture of Czechoslovak. The story was confusing to me (as I told you, because of my lack of knowledge). But I know many booklovers will love this story. The story line was very unique. And the language used by the author is amazing. Even though I rated it 3 out of 5 stars, it is a story with a deeper meaning.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shamelessly stealing the title from a Dostoevsky book of the same name, British writer Roger Scruton published this novel in 2014, drawing on his real-life experiences helping Czech dissidents against communism during the 1980s. It tells a bittersweet love story between Jan Reichl, condemned to menial jobs because of his father's alleged crimes, and Betka, a girl he meets through his involvement in the political underground of Prague. It's a short book that evokes the time and place it describes in exquisite prose - visitors to the city will recognise its various locales and smatterings of Czech language throughout. Scruton is better known as a philosopher than a novelist, and this is clear by the musings of his characters - while they think more deeply than might be realistic, this approach also enriches the story with the ideology and morality necessary for the story. I enjoyed it.

[Marcus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scruton was a real-life purveyor of western, liberal education in the Soviet bloc and Budapest for example has four businesses named after him. Here, we focus on his work in Prague. The paranoid and put upon public scurry around informing on one another to the shadowy communist state. His parents both removed for thought crimes, our narrator contents himself in living underground and writing subversive literature. The air of stifling conformity and threat recalls George Orwell’s 1984, obviously taking it to the real life inspiration with Big Brothers spying on every street corner.

It is important to shine a light on Communism, as many continue to look back with red-tinted glasses at this murderous and oppressive social experiment. That said, although Scruton is obviously a gifted writer, the novel is a little disjointed and lacking in any real sense of immersion. Instead the characters line up robotically to deliver his favourite talking points on religion, literature, art, classical music, architecture etc.

"I shrugged the prophecies off as part of the great fiction to which Father Pavel subscribed, the fiction of a benign creator who could watch mankind enslave itself, reduce itself to the condition of mutual antipathy, and in general make itself loveless and unlovable and still have plans to rescue us. God, if he existed, was surely not so daft."

[Robert Stout · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roger Scruton's Notes from Underground is a title that he borrowed from Dostoevsky. The story is about a young man named Honza who finds himself becoming a part of the underground in communist Czechoslovakia after his mother is arrested for making books by banned authors. He meets a women named Debka who is active in the underground, and she draws him in. Honza falls in love with Debka and the two try to stay off the radar of the police. Both Honza and Debka are secular and neither believes in God. Both seem helpless and despair and seem lost while trying to live in an authoritarian society. I will not spoil the end and tells what happens to their romance. The book is ok but Scruton is not Dostoevsky.

[Swayam Sharma · Rating 1 out of 5]

An utter disappointment. The two central characters and the narrative around them are both vacuous and pretentious. After you shed the metaphors and the fluorid language of which the author is a master you are left with the narrative about a typical ambitious woman who uses men's desire for her to get what she wants and a masochistic h*rny young man who seeks a lover who can also be his mother. The relationship between them is vulgar, self serving and entirely toxic. Towards the end of the book, the author has tried quite hard to evoke some sympathy for the female lead however he miserably fails to elicit any, at least in me.

[Laura Condessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

metrô, comunismo e filosofia: 100% do livro me lembrando de um grande amigo que exala exatamente esse universo. para isso, com certeza, daria mais estrelas; talvez 5. foi como se eu conversasse com esse meu amigo a cada página passada.

em relação ao livro de uma maneira mais ampla, achei que me perdi um pouco nas descrições oferecidas pela história e tive algumas dificuldades de fluir a leitura. apesar disso, esse livro tem um charme muito britânico e isso é bem legal.

[Mima Bodnarova · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Jak jen tady v hlavním městě USA, kde každý strom oplývá ovocem hojnosti a dny končí večírkem, kde se přátelé vesele navštěvují, a strach je speciální produkt, který se kupuje a prodává na videu nebo stahuje z internetu, jak jen tady mohou postihnout svět, v němž se drží jazyk za zuby a přátelství má příchuť hříchu? “

[Stanley Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Interesting Work

This is a very interesting work from Sir Roger Scruton on the last dying years of communist Czechoslovakia. Although somewhat also a love story, this work describes the happenings of communist culture of suspicion. I have read several works dealing with the communist culture suspicion, which this work ranks in the middle. Recommended...SLT

[Ivana Krekáňová · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ukazuje nám, že svet samizdatu bol svetom rovnosti, kde sa nerozlišovalo, kto má talent a kto nie. Každý, kto sa na to cítil a sám seba považoval za autora, si mohol dovoliť uverejniť svoje dielo bez toho, aby sa musel obávať akejkoľvek verejnej kritiky. Na prvý pohľad príbeh o láske, na každý ďalší pohľad o tom, čo si sami vyberiete. Ako sám hovorí, je to príbeh o pravde, hoci nie je skutočný.

[Matej · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historizujúci román, nie literatúra faktu, ako som čakal.

Pár zaujímavých pozorovaní k disentu na pozadí romantického príbehu a pomerne veľa prednášok k pravde a pre mňa nasilu zasadených estetických postrehov.

[Anicius · Rating 4 out of 5]

A love story in a world of literary imagination cocooned in Prague during the fadeout of the communist government. It examines the curious engagement of the lovers in the shifting realities and social conformities during the transition.

[Almachius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, this novel is too short. How does he pack so many themes and ideas into what is also a romance, a history and a Kafkaesque fairytale in such short space? The twists necessitate a second reading, but the language and imagery deserve one.

[Dirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had hoped for more insight into socialism itself
I am a bit weary of books which stress the importance of books
good knowledge of Czech for a foreigner though

[Jacob Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tough read but well worth it.

[Joey · Rating 5 out of 5]

anything roger has written was thoughtful and touching. im not a reader but this touched every piece of my soul

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of inner dialogue, little action, hovering communists in the background.

[T.]

Wow.

[Richard Bicknase · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this 3.5 stars if that were an option.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t enjoy this one. The writing was good but the story didn’t draw me in.

[Chuckdee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I honestly felt like I was in Prague 40 years ago

[Craig Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historical fiction about the samizdat movement in Eastern Europe. You owe it to yourself to look into Scrutons political activity in the 80s in these contries.