Two meaningful and profound, short (less than 100-page each) but no way easy books that I've read recently by two Russian giants: Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych and Dostoievski's Notes from Underground. After reading these two books, I'm not sure between these two great writers, who is the greater psychologist. Both characters are so real in their suffering, their attitudes to lives, to surrounding, and to themselves. Both are not good men, in common sense.
Ivan Ilych is an average guy, who can be immoral and corrupted sometimes (like most of the rest of us), whose life is "normal", boring and insignificant. The Underground Man is ugly (in both appearance and character), full of self-hatred and misogony, who lives and plays his role simultaneously, sometimes consciously and sometimes uncounsciously. Ivan Illych faces death and despairs of death. The Underground Man faces existence and the despair of his absurd, self-loving, self-hating, unhappy but self-satisfying existence. But both are serevely inflicted by the question of a meaningful existence. In Ivan's case, that's the sorrow and agony of not living a meaningful live. For the Underground Man, that's the suffering of his I-can't-help-it feeling , of having no choice in the freedom that he proudly feels he is conscious of, of the illusion of being disillusioned.
It appears that Ivan and the Underground Man are so different: one is an ordinary, boring, fairly socialized medium-level bureaucrat (Ivan is a very common Russian name), the other is an abnormal, disrupting, self-loathing and anti-social low-level clerk. Yet, I have a feeling that their lives can be exchanged. The Underground man could have become such a bureaucrat like Ivan if he had chosen it when he was young. And Ivan could have become such a self-hating man like the Underground Man (actually, he has become such a man like that in his final days). Just like choosing the answer for the Underground Man's question: "Which is better - cheap happiness or exalted suffering?" Man can choose, at least in some situations. (Is it good or bad?)
And to some extend, perhaps they are not so different from us, we ordinary people who are living or striving to live a "full life" and achieve something- the things that may serve no other purposes than a proof of our ephermeral and "originally meaningless" existence.
Apart from their philosophies (the so-called humane Christianism by Tolstoy and pre-existentialism by Dostoievski), these two books are masterful psychological analyses. I have never read any book which describes a man facing a "normal" death as subtly as Tolstoy's (well, the Snow of Kilimanjaro is also a masterful story, but it's more poetic than psychological). I also have never read a book which shows me the mind of an anti-social and self-loathing person as powerful as the short work by Dostoievski.
The Russian-speaking writer Nabokov (the author of the famous novel Lolita) called "The Death of Ivan Ilych" the greatest Russian literature. Writer- philosophers Camus and Sartre hailed "Notes from the Underground" as the inspiration for their works. So, if you think you are ready to give a thought about death, existence, depression and and meaning of life, give these two short books a chance.
But have a warning: Absolutely, these books are not really necessary if you think that you already know (or don't give a damn) what a meaningful life is. These books can be depresing and boring to death to people like consuming something quick, funny and happy.
PS: I try to think of some alternatives (something quick, funny and happy: books, movies whaterver) to recommend but I can't think of any now. Does anyone have an idea?
Epilogue:
So, so you think you can tell.
Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell
(PF- Wish you were here)
(Note: Lyrics posted here is only for the purpose of pretending to be sophisticated and intellectual more than I really am 
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