The Man Without Qualities, Volume 1

The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil is one of those great books that no one reads. Among those types of books, this one is less known than most and really I decided to read it just to be able to say I read it. Or at least Volume 1, which is 700 pages or so (in fairly small text). Volume 2, published posthumously and unfinished, is something like another 1500 pages.

For various reasons, one of which is that it's a slow read, it took me so long to read this book that I barely remember the first half of it. It doesn't help that this book doesn't have much of a plot; it is philosophically inclined and a portrait of Vienna just before WWI (and how ridiculous their concerns given what was looming.)

The "man without qualities" (a German pun) is Ulrich, a smart guy who decides he doesn't want to try to be a genius anymore when he reads a newspaper describing a race horse as a "genius" which offends him, because everything was now being referred to as genius. So instead of specializing in engineering and mathematics, he drifts around and gets sucked into affairs political and romantic but none of this really is that important. Mostly, he just muses about the meaning of life with other people who do exactly the same thing. As with the genius example, it was constantly surprising how much a book written eighty years ago is relevant and still applies today. I'm starting to believe that the idea that there was a different time in the past is a myth. Every "present," no matter the date, seems to rebel against the exact same past. Anyway.

The Man Without Qualities isn't really that difficult to read, fortunately, and, if you are into philosophical plotless books, then this is quite good. The sentences are precise and not like Proust where you forget what you were reading at the beginning of the sentence when you're at the end of it a page and a half later. The book is also quite funny in the not laugh out loud sense (i.e. not scatological, slapstick, etc.) but in wit and in absurd insights that seem ridiculous but are true.

Let me randomly open the book. Here is a passage from page 296:

"It is simply my conviction," Ulrich replied, "that thinking is a world of its own, and real life is another. The difference between their respective levels of development at the present time is too great. Our brain is some thousands of years old, but if it had worked out only half of everything and forgotten the other half, its true image would be our reality. All one can do is refuse intellectual participation in it."
"Aren't you making things much too easy for yourself?" Diotima asked ... "Arnheim enjoys theorizing too, but I think he lets hardly anything pass without examining all its aspects. Don't you feel that the point of thinking is to be a concentrated capacity for applying --"
"No," Ulrich said.
"I'd like to hear what answer Arnheim gave you."
"He told me that the intellect today is the helpless spectator of real developments because it is dodging the great tasks of life. He asked me to look at what subjects the arts treat, at what trivia the churches concern themselves with, at how narrow even the perspective of the scholars is -- and I should consider that all the while, the earth is being literally carved up! Then he said that this was precisely what he wanted to talk with me about."
"And what was your answer?"
"I told him that realizing a potential always attracts me less than the unrealized, and I mean not only the future but also the past and missed opportunities. It seems to me our history has been that every time we have fulfilled some small part of an idea, we are so pleased that we leave the much greater remainder unfinished. Magnificent institutions are usually the bungled drafts of their ideas; so, incidentally, are magnificent personalities. That's what I answered. A difference in the angle of perspective, so to speak."


All the intelligentsia in Austria in 1913 apparently speak like that when translated into English. So if you'd enjoy reading 700 pages of that, then you'll love this book. I haven't decided if I'm going to read Volume 2 yet but I'm really glad I can read something else instead for awhile.