Best Books Ever: Musil’s Unfinished Masterwork

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Best Books Ever series examines authors’ singular favorite book of all time. A decadent sachertorte, a very dense topfentorte—from the culture that truly invented the croissant in collaboration with Turkey, a headquarters for all that was considered good taste and high culture for a short period, came a grandiose novel about grandiosity itself and the ineffability of so-called greatness—about culture as a vague and earnest groping for something it could...

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Best Books Ever series examines authors’ singular favorite book of all time.

A decadent sachertorte, a very dense topfentorte—from the culture that truly invented the croissant in collaboration with Turkey, a headquarters for all that was considered good taste and high culture for a short period, came a grandiose novel about grandiosity itself and the ineffability of so-called greatness—about culture as a vague and earnest groping for something it could never quite achieve, and perhaps in all of this culture, no culture at all.

Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man Without Qualities), Austrian novelist Robert Musil’s unfinished multi-volume masterwork—which was marginialized and fell into osbcurity in Germany and Austria during Nazi occupation, is full of half-phrases, kofferworters (portmanteaus): long, strung-together, made-up expressions vaguely grasping at the understanding of all things, that wants so badly to be summarized and made finite, yet constantly shifts through one’s fingers.

It speaks to me of the endless cycle of politics, new music, art, and ways of speaking that come and go. It speaks to any sort of commentary on today’s society, on the rise of science, on truth versus possibility, soul versus spirit, science versus mythology, and language… versus lack therof.

Musil’s style is extremely dense: long paragraphs that seem to never end, pouring deeper and deeper into some idea that he holds in his hand like an impenetrable rock. Which he wants to explain but not to disturb with words. And yet none of his words, albeit an English translation that I’ve read, have ever felt to me unnecessary or “purple.” The result, for me, has always been like a pound cake or some very savory scone that does not waste its or your time. You are likely to find it so dry that you couldn’t possibly read a sentence, or such a challenge of mind-power that you cannot put it down, because of the careful placement of the words.

It does not surprise me that the work was never finished, because his satirical protagonist, Ulrich, was so definitely the construction of a man who never wanted to finish his sentence, on principle, or become too specific. One who decried commitment to any form or end. I will oftentimes pick up this book, open to some page in the middle, somewhere at random, and read a few paragraphs like some dry, wise snack.

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The Man Without Qualities
Robert Musil
Burton Pike (Editor)
Solomon Apt (Translator)
Sophie Wilkins (Translator)

Best Books Ever: Musil’s Unfinished Masterwork

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