Musil the man without qualities5/28/2023 He is not meditative or contemplative - that is, he seeks neither peace nor enlightenment. He is a habitual thinker whose most characteristic activity is to continually refine his analysis of himself and the people around him. He is ostensibly a mathematician, but although his mind still works like that of a scientist, he has ceased to be inspired by his vocation, and finds himself in the midst of an existential crisis. Ulrich is an unmarried man in his early 30s who has recently returned to Vienna from several years abroad. Nevertheless, the writing is so precise and the argument Musil makes about Ulrich and his situation so intricate that it is intellectually and aesthetically involving even before it becomes emotionally so. The first volume of The Man without Qualities runs to 365 pages, and the dilemma of the protagonist, Ulrich, is presented only on about page 300. It is well worth reading, even though it is very long, very slow, and was unfinished at the time of Robert Musil's death. T his is one of the most prestigious novels of the 20th century the sort of book no one has read but everyone has heard of.
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