Ron Peters's Reviews > The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic

What a long book! My completist Picador edition has an additional twenty chapters and fragments grouped under “The Posthumous Papers,” that I did not read.

This modernist (in some ways post-modern) novel, like so many, has no ending. 1,488 pages later I have only a vague idea what it is about. A lot of it concerns the efforts of the protagonist Ulrich who, owing to a passing fluke, becomes involved in planning a public celebration for Emperor Franz Josef in 1913.

It’s also a satire on pre-WWI Austria and its manners, done with more overt humor than Thomas Mann. Like Mann’s The Magic Mountain the main characters seem meant to represent philosophic/political positions. A lot of it has the rambling quality of Proust, in a chattier style, like you’re inside Musil’s skull while he floats down life’s river, endlessly observing.

I have no idea what the purpose of many chapters was. It doesn’t help that Burton Price’s Preface describes the very large Part 2 as being made up of “drafts, notes, and sketches.”

Most of it consists of ideas, feelings, and philosophical ramblings concerning Austro-Hungarian society and the protagonist’s attempt to make sense of life within it. As the world builds toward war, the author plainly disbelieves in the reality of the values and meanings of the culture of his day. So, a good part of it is the story of an outsider striving for meaning while feeling strongly that it cannot be found in his society. In this way, it is characteristic of many novels written around the time of, or concerned with the effects of, World War One.

I wonder if Musil had any idea of where his book was headed, or if it was headed anywhere. James Wood’s review of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth contains ideas on “the contemporary idea of the big, ambitious novel” that I think apply to Musil as well: https://tinyurl.com/2p9b5t8c.