This is the first English translation of a lecture delivered by Robert Musil, the Austrian novelist, in Vienna in March 1937. The Confusions of Young Törless, published in 1906 while he was a student, uncovers the bullying, snobbery, and vicious homoerotic violence at an elite boys academy.Unsparingly honest in its depiction of the author's tangled feelings about his mother Modernity Laid Bare – Virgil Newmoianu The same, with emphasis on the historical context. Denounced as aimless and experimental—the charge of expressionism was bandied about—the collection was a fantastic flopola, and it doesn’t really take a careful autopsy to see why. 2) I am often worried that when I like a writer, reading their major work will ruin anything else they’ve written. Denounced as aimless and experimental—the charge of expressionism was bandied about—the collection was a fantastic flopola, and it doesn’t really take a careful autopsy to see why. Now considered a classic of early-20th-century literature, Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (1943) presents a neurasthenic fellow who lives entirely too much inside his own head, a mathematician who is indifferent to bourgeois life but partakes of it all the same. Robert Musil; drawing by David Levine. Help us create the kind of literary community you’ve always dreamed of. Undertaken after the succès d'estime of his first novel, The Confusions of Young Torless, the two novellas that make up Intimate Ties marked Robert Musil’s first great critical failure. Robert Musil From a review. But for most of us, Robert Musil is first and foremost the author of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1903-1943, The Man Without Qualities), a book in which the major themes of his earlier works coalesce to form a novelistic tapestry of extraordinary wit, complexity, and intelligence. t is worth stressing the wit. I suspect that I'll be attacked for this review but nonetheless: Musil is a great writer but the narratorial voice is incessantly negative, bitter, and arrogant and it's hard to spend the time it requires to read more than 1500 pages with something/someone so relentlessly negative, bitter, and arrogant. This novel marks Musil, albeit unwittingly (he hated Joyce and loved the 19th- century Russian novelists), as the high priest of German modernism (see Arno Schmidt's Collected Novellas, p. 1371). Along with Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu and Joyce’s Ulysses, Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities represents the pinnacle of the modernist novel in Europe.In terms of content if not technique, Musil’s work speaks most directly to a contemporary readership. Categories: FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP ... More by Robert Musil. Franz Blei, The Powderpuff. by Robert Musil bookshelf Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Like his contemporary and rival Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil boldly explored the dark, irrational undercurrents of humanity.