I actually wrote this review something like four years ago. You have to admire him for trying though. Musil spent over 20 years writing The Man Without Qualities and died without finishing it, because what does it mean to be human? is a question not answerable by one man. Having said this, there is something heroic about his endeavour, something moving even. Over 500 pages in he is still wrestling with the nature of human consciousness and the questions what is greatness? and how should one live one’s life? It is as though he took on too many of the big questions and ended up being defeated by them.

Unlike his contemporaries Joyce or Proust or Mann, Musil doesn’t seem to be in control of his work. One has to lean more towards one type of writing, otherwise one ends up bobbing along somewhere between the two, and actually negating the benefits of either. It tries to be both and therefore fails, because they are two separate disciplines. It is neither a successful novel, nor a successful philosophy text. Upon finishing the book I was left with an impression of failure. A plot relating to a campaign to celebrate the reign of a king is essentially wrapped around these philosophical musings, like a piece of delicate lace. However, The Man Without Qualities is over 1000 pages, hundreds of pages of which are given over to quite rigorous philosophical essays. Yasunari Kawabata’s books do not go anywhere, they almost completely lack plot, but they work as short and evocative pieces. Now, this would not be too much of a problem if it were shorter.

The novel lacks what I would call narrative movement, or momentum.

The thing is, I couldn’t help feeling that I would have been even more interested in what I was being told if I had actually been going somewhere that the feeling of, the frustration caused by, immobility compromised my enjoyment and distracted my attention. One of my main criticisms of the book is that reading it felt like being stuck in a traffic jam with an interesting and engaging companion. But did I enjoy the experience? To a large extent, yes, but I have some reservations. I, to continue my metaphor, have taken all of Musil’s intellectual cocks and come out of it, aching and sore, but alive. It is to novels what The World’s Biggest Gangbang is to porn: stupidly ambitious and inevitably exhausting. It is, along with Ulysses and In Search Of Lost Time, part of the holy trinity of overly long and difficult novels. The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil has been on my to-read list for about two years.

The man without qualities review