is he constructing a casuistical theory to excuse his own failures?

In the spring of 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested, tried, and sentenced to Siberian prison and exile for his association with the subversive Petrashevsky circle.

a pre-Marxian, non-"scientific" form of socialism commonly designated as "utopian".

Dostoevsky set about the masterpiece one could call liminal

when life has the temerity to imitate literature

The familiar dialectic repeats itself: dreams of love and glory, followed by fits of self-hatred, shame, and spite

The fashionable words for this state, in the late twentieth century, are alienation and anomie

[...] the speaker has involved the reader from the beginning, addressing him directly, anticipating his reactions, preempting his judgments, denying him the comfortable role of spectator.

These "notes" are a performance, part tirade, part memor, by a nameless personage who claims to be writing for himself alone but who consistently manipulates the reader--of whom he is morbidly aware--to the point where there seems to be no judgment the reader can make which the writer has not already made himself. In the absence of any other source of information or perspective, we suffer his contradictions no less helplessly than he does. For Dostoevsky's presence as author is enigmatic and minimal, confined to a pararaph of introduction and three laconic sentences of conclusion.