Feyodor Dostoevsky is considered the father of the existetialist novel.
His ground breaking work, Notes from the Underground, influenced such writers and philosophers as Nietzsche, Chekhov, Kafka, Sartre, Camus, and several others.
The Underground Man is a wretched and miserable character who lashes out against the idea of progress in the nineteenth century.
Most recently, R.
F.
Georgy's Notes from the Cafe is an existentialist rant against the digital age.
Georgy pays Homage to Dostoevsky by bringing back the Underground Man in the form of the Cafe Dweller.
Georgy's Dweller is a man both brilliant and irrationally unstable.
His unique observational perspective (I don't want to give the plot away) allows him to observe the information age.
For Georgy, "Information paints no picture, sings no song, and writes no poem.
" Notes from the Cafe is a powerful intellectual and philosophical indictment against an age where "experts and speciailists have become the prophets of our time, actors and sports players are mythological heroes, and mediocrity is our virtue.
" Georgy covers such topics as Nietzsche's God is dead declaration, agnosticism, the absurd, death, and philosophy.
In response to Nietzsche, Georgy argues that he failed to distinguish between the God of philosophy and the God of the everyday.
Philosophers have killed God in the nineteenth century, but it was science that finally buried him six feet under.
"Our illustrious twenty-first century has finally buried God six feet under without any hope of resurrection.
Our hands are stained; stained with the blood of our father, may he rest in peace.
Mourn with me, gentlemen, we need to mourn together.
I miss God already.
I grant you he was an epistemically complicated thing for us to grasp, but he was necessary and useful.
Who do these philosophers with their fancy logic think they are?" As far as the abusrd, Georgy suggests that technology is only masking the truth about who we are.
Tchnology gives us the illusion that our lives have meaning and purpose, but the absurd is never far.
"We go to great extremes to cure disease, increase longevity, improve our appearance, and all to make us forget that our lives are absurd.
Yes, I'm back to the absurd if you don't mind.
You see, gentlemen, the absurd has never left us.
It is always there; always lurking beneath the surface, ready to strike at any time.
We believe that if we drown our existence in technology that we will somehow change our nature.
" This compact novella does not only pay homage to Dostoevsky, it updates the idea of an underground, Neo-Luddite who offers a firghtening image of the digital age.
This book should be required reading.