Reading 1001 discussion

Here is link to book page. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

I just finished the whole thing this week, but will hold off discussing this part until May to keep it on the suggested schedule. Did just want to say though that I did start the indexed review page for anyone else when they finish up the book.: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Amanda wrote: "I just finished the whole thing this week, but will hold off discussing this part until May to keep it on the suggested schedule. Did just want to say though that I did start the indexed review pag..."

Thanks Amanda, I will get it in the index soon.

I did read part two over a month ago, but I do remember how I felt about it. This part largely concerned with Ulrich's relationship with his sister Agathe, and how it develops once they meet up after their father's death. There's a lot of discussion about desire and relationships (especially in the context of marriage), that I wasn't really into.

There is also a semi-incestuous vibe between Ulrich and his sister. Nothing is explicit, but they are waaaay to close and consider each other 'soulmates' and 'siamese twins'. I didn't hate this as a concept for 'a man without qualities', but I wasn't enthralled with it either.

Diotima also reappears near the end of the of this part and gets philosophical with Ulrich- but more on interpersonal matters instead of the more strongly political content of the first part.

It does kind of end abruptly and in a not really satisfying way but yanno, Musil did die so not really anything that could have been done about that. It was around here that I was pretty sure I was going to give it 3 stars. I enjoyed it and didn't hate it at all, I just thought his shorter and more focused book on the list was a lot more successful.

Interested to see what other people thought about this part.

I have completed the third part "Into the Millennium (The Criminals)" and have yet to read "From the Posthumous Papers" Part 1 and Part 2.
I am finding the open architecture of the book to be both a reading blessing and a curse. There are chapters that I find very interesting, such as the ones where the relationship between Clarisse and her husband Walter, Ulrich and even Moosbrugger unfold. However, many of the chapters with Ulrich spouting off philosophical and moral stances that he will repudiate in the next section do tend to tire me. I like the sections where multiple parties are philosophizing such as the get togethers at Diotima's house. Sarcasm works better out of the mouth of multiples maybe as the author and the reader see the world falling apart before the character's eyes from a point in time that the characters can not imagine.
This book was that my college friends insisted that I read with them. There was many a late night talk session and early morning hung over session largely centered around this book. I did attempt to read it at the time and very quickly gave up. I have no idea if it would have been a better read back then when all thinking and talking would have been a stimulus to envisioning whole possible worlds.
I also do not particularly enjoy the benignly sexual relationship between Ulrich and his sister. I realize that here again is a picture of a world where the moral standards are coming undone and their relationship is just another example but nevertheless it tends to irritate me that they circle around each other to no good end.
I will probably persevere but I can not say that I am looking forward to the totally unfinished sections of the book.

The second part, titled "Pseudoreality Prevails" or (using a free translation from my French edition) "Always the Same Story", spans a little bit more than 100 chapters. The main focus is on the activities and the very slow development of the "parallel Action" for the year of Austria, and the relationships of the characters gravitating around this project.

Several other characters now appear, to provide further intrigue and subplots to the story: Arnheim, a man with all the qualities, and his domestic, Soliman; General Stumm von Bordwehr and his awkward desire for knowledge; the Fischel family. Nevertheless, the story progresses very slowly because of all the ideas that are developed in depth throughout the little events featuring a few of the characters at a time. At times, the development of these ideas can be overwhelming and it is easy to get lost into them and out of the narrative tissue; while they might be difficult to follow, they strangely make the reading easier and flowing. It was still to go through a chunk of 40 pages without putting the book down; yet, you could be left with the feeling of not knowing what you have just read and wishing that you had more time to ponder a bit longer on these ideas. Overall, it reinforces the idea of an Austro-Hungarian Empire going nowhere, focusing only on matters close to its navel and ignoring the threats that start to accumulate within and beyond its borders.

The part ends with the death of Ulrich's father and his preparations to leave Vienna to take care of the funeral and the execution of the will. And it is not a coincidence that the last chapter is titled Le Tournant, which I would translate as "turning point".

I am reading on Kindle and my edition doesn't break it down into sections so for me I need to get to 66% to finish this section I am currently at 50%.

The most interesting bit for me was the library and the librarians who refuse to read as it would fill their heads with unnecessary detail when all they actually need to know is Title, Author and a basic blurb.

I am finding it a struggle to pick this book up but I will continue onward and upward.

Book wrote: "I am reading on Kindle and my edition doesn't break it down into sections so for me I need to get to 66% to finish this section I am currently at 50%.

The most interesting bit for me was the libra..."
I am also at about 50 %. I struggle to pick it up to but during my nights when I am unable to sleep, I use the paperwhite kindle so I read about 1 to 2 % a night

Well I have hit my 66% so job done for part 2 LOL

Here are the things I noticed in this volume:

Art - "What was more important, ten thousand starving human beings or a work of art?"

Politics especially relevant in UK at the moment. -"She did not know that politicians who had called each other liars and crooks in the assembly hall went amicably to lunch side by side in the dining hall."

"The present era, they argued, was blind to the rights of young people; a person had virtually no rights until he or she had come of age."

"The only trouble is that engines were ordered by the Artillery and the fuel is provided by the War Ministry's Department of Works"

"I don't know whether you've noticed this, but there has never yet been an opposition party that didn't cease to be in opposition when they took over the helm."

Religion - "DOES MODERN MAN BELIEVE IN GOD OR IN THE HEAD OF THE WORLDWIDE CORPORATION?

"Bonadea the Good Goddess, Goddess of Chastity, whose temple by one of those twists of fate ended up as the scene of orgies."

Science - "Since there are so many problems where one's rheumatism happens to be a surer guide than science"

While I still have trouble picking this up it is obviously giving me more to think about than I realised.

Well, I got to the end of part 2, which I believe coincides with the end of the second volume. I am not enjoying it as much as I first did. The style I enjoyed in the first volume does not make for interesting reading across a larger book. It all feels a bit disjointed to me, with nothing much happening with the characters and limited continuation from one chapter to the next, which makes it very hard to keep reading. Once I put it down, I have pretty much no inclination to pick it back up again.

I agree with book, I enjoyed the bit about librarians never reading any books. I think General Stumm is my favourite character.

I found a few interesting tidbits in this second volume, but not nearly enough to warrant the tidal wave of tedious chapters I had to wade through to find them.

"You cannot turn great ideas into reality any more than you can do it with music."

"Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art?"

"An author...must have an awful lot of like-minded readers before he can pass for an impressive thinker."

"Once a man has the reputation of being Napolean, even his lost battles count as victories."

"Does having an exact forecast matter all that much in a world where things always turn out differently from what one had expected, anyway."

"Politics; the general obsession with turning every viewpoint into a standpoint and regarding every standpoint as a viewpoint."

"You may depend on it that our friend Tuzzi would give the signal for war with the clearest conscience in the world, even if as a man he may be incapable of shooting down an old dog, and your friend Moosbrugger will be sent to his death by thousands of people because only three of them need have a hand in it personally. This system of indirection elevated to an art is what nowadays enables the individual and society as a whole to function with a clear conscience; the button to be pressed is always clean and shiny, and what happens at the other end of the line is the business of others, who, for their part, don't press the button."


I'm not looking forward to the third volume, but I believe it changes location and introduces a new character, so I'm also hoping for a change of pace. We'll see.

I forgot to type in about my experiences with installment #2. Reading this a little each month really isn't working for me. I get disengaged in the interim. I really enjoyed the first part of the book, but now I struggle with focus.

I will continue on with this, but I hope it changes for the better. I am a little disappointed given the thousands of very high ratings.

I commented on intriguing chapter titles in Part One. Some I especially liked were:
A Chapter That May Be Missed By Anyone Not Particularly Impressed By Thinking As An Occupation
A Man Without Qualities Consists of Qualitites Without a Man
I am confused about whether this part includes the death of Ulrich's father or not, but here are some of the highlights for me.
"Now, ethnic prejudice is usually nothing more than self-hatred, dredged up from the murky depths of one's own conflicts and projected onto some convenient victim, a traditional practice from time immemorial when the shaman used a stick, said to be the repository of the demon's power, to draw the sickness out of the afflicted".
"After all, Arnheim said to himself firmly, a man who is aware of his responsibilities, even when giving his soul away, sacrifices only the interest, never the capital".
"It looks like some tremendous weakness and carelessness, but it is probably also quite a deliberate effort to put the spiritual dimension in its place, for if any one of the ideas that motivate our lives was ever carried out seriously, so seriously that nothing would be left of its opposite, then our civilisation would hardly be our civilisation. "

Probably Ulrich's comments reflect those of Musil himself. Ulrich is constantly searching for meaning, for an overarching principle by which to live. The part I found especially interesting was when Ulrich and Agathe explore the similarities between mysticism and eroticism. "But nature, he thought, provides men with nipples and women with rudimentary male sex organs, which shouldn't lead us to conclude that our ancestors were hermaphrodites. Nor need they have been psychological hybrids either. And so it must have been from outside that they receive the double possibility of giving and receiving a vision, as a dual aspect of nature, and somehow all this is far older than the difference of gender , on which the sexes later drew to fill out their psychological wardrobe..."