Reading 1001 discussion

Link to book page. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...

The second volume (in the French edition) contains the third part titled (loose translation) "Towards the millenial reign or the Criminals". The first 38 chapters were complete and published during the life of Musil. And with Ulrich travelling outside Vienna, the story also leaves the Action in the background and focuses now on the developing relationship between Ulrich and his "lost" sister Agathe. Their relationship grows into some sort of Utopian Eden-like love story, where they ultimately commit incest (at the beginning of the unfinished part) after much resistance. The intrigues with Arnheim and Stumm shift as the nature and the function of the Action changes; the Fischel family explodes, with some collateral damage (Hans); Clarisse, having shown several signs of a disturbed mind, deteriorates to a predictable end. This part is at first more readable than the previous two; while there are still a large number of ideas being thrown in, they seem a little bit clearer in their development.

A further 90 chapters, some complete, most unfinished or only sketched as plans, were published posthomously and form the second part of this second volume. They could easily, if completed, have formed a fourth part. While they provide some idea of where and how Musil wanted to finish the novel, several holes and some contradictions between sketches prevent the reader to get a good picture. I would say that it is quite possible that he would have changed some of his intentions while he was filling the gaps and reviewing some of the existing passages. However, he died before he put the final period to his chunky masterpiece.

Admittedly this was the part of the book that stood out to me the least/ my least favorite part. Obviously this isn't held against Musil, as he had died, but I think maybe putting the last completed chapters up as part of the book and the rest as appendix material would have made more sense.

I also wasn't nearly as interested in the bits with Ulrich's sister and the incest subplot as I was in the Diotima and celebration of the millennium bits.

But, overall I still liked the book and rated it 3 stars.

I am at 84% now and it was kind of interesting and now it is just a lot of thoughts. Not really holding my attention. I'd like to be done with it.

I have finished Part 1 of the Posthumous Papers. This part is not finished and there are alternate versions of some of the chapters. In addition, there are "notes to self" about what could change or how one of the characters might respond. Almost the entire section is Ulrich and his sister, Agathe speaking to each other in Ulrich's classic dialectic. They discuss language use, specificity of emotions (internal and external) but mostly variations on love such as two kinds of ways of living and two kinds of passion. In general it was a slog for me. There is one chapter on Clarisse which was a treat and two on General Stumm which were at least different as it was a discussion about genius instead of love. On page 1334 of this long book there is actually a discussion on "qualities" and a clarification of what Musil means by a "man without qualities".
Part 2 of the Posthumous Papers is edited by year, at least in my edition, which at least might be an interesting way of seeing how Musil's ideas shift over the very long time it took him to write, but never finish this book.
I am on page 1413 out of my edition's 1774 total pages.
Onward...

After spending what feels like weeks with Ulrich and Agathe justifying their actions and debating about love we finally hit a change of pace.

What really struck me in this section was the visit to the mental hospital - am I alone in having an image of Anthony Hopkins in the silence of the lambs? Especially as it is Clarisse who wants to visit with a murderer?

The book ends with a party - to plan the parallel campaign which appears to end in failure when everyone leaves early not wanting to commit to anything.

Literally as a reader I feel all the characters slowly exited as the book progressed and I was left sitting alone thinking where is everyone?

Some quotes I highlighted as I went along:

"it only amounts to what everyone wants from art, to be moved, overwhelmed, entertained, surprised, to be allowed a sniff of noble ideas; in short, to be made to experience something 'alive', have a 'living' experience"

"Because the male procreator is so prone to this fiasco, he only feels sexually secure if he doesn't have to be afraid of a woman's being in some way or other other spiritually superior, and that's why men hardly ever have the courage to try a relationship with a woman who's their equal as a human being."

"The great blunder of her life, she admitted, was in achieving an eminence too great for her male marriage partner's naive need to feel superior, so she had set about toning it down by hiding her spiritual superiority behind a more suitable erotic coquetry"

" I got out of the habit of taking life seriously. I get much more out of it when I read about it in a novel, where it's wrapped up in some point of view, but when I'm expected to experience it in all its fullness it always seems already obsolete, overdone in an old-fashioned way, and intellectually outdated."

"Urlich felt a strong arousal and a great uneasiness at this idea; it was hard for him to draw the line between a new way of looking at something and a distortion of the ordinary way."

"When one believes that one is living in a very important, very splendid and very great period, one does not welcome the idea that anything especially important, splendid, and great has yet to happen in it."

"Bremshuber demands the ruthless suppression of all alien races; that's surely less cruel than toleration and contempt!"

"When the father is poor, the sons love money; when Papa has money the sons love mankind."

"The party had reached the boiling point and was impelling the guests to constantly circulate."

"Any man may choose to die for his own ideas, but whoever induces men to die for ideas not their own is a murderer."

I actually appreciated this installment more since I read it all in one shot. I found myself repeatedly disconnected to the earlier parts by reading this in monthly installments. I realize that this method of reading completely does not work for me, especially in books like this.

I enjoyed the parts about Ulrich and Agathe, but I guess I am in the minority. I wonder how this book might be if it was finished. I also wonder how much longer it would be - yikes! Maybe he would have edited it and made it shorter (not likely!).

I finished, whoo hoo. Long time since I actually finished an annual read.
Here are my highlights;
1. We have gained in terms of reality and lost in terms of the dream
2. mathematics is the source of a wicked intellect that, while making man the lord of the earth, also makes him the slave of the machine.
3. he felt like some noxious little worm that was being attentively scrutinised by a large hen.
4. it could not ward off the realisation that in its main outlines life at such posts remains the life one has brought out from home with the rest of one’s luggage.
5. And as he advances through life, leaving behind him what he has lived through, a wall is formed by what is still to be lived and what has been lived, and in the end his path resembles that of a worm in the wood, which can twist any way it likes, even turning backwards, but always leaves an empty space behind it. And this dreadful feeling of a blind space, a space cut off behind all the fullness, this half that is always still lacking even although everything has become a whole, is what finally causes one to notice what one calls the soul.
6. In youth it is a distinct feeling of uncertainty, in everything one does, as to whether whatever it is is really the right thing. In old age it is amazement at how little one has done of all that one actually intended.
7. how science came to have its present-day aspect (which is in itself important, since after all it dominates us, not even an illiterate being safe from
8. primal Evil, as it might be called, is something they do not lose even in undergoing this trans formation. It is apparently indestructible and eternal, or at least as eternal as everything humanly sublime, since it consists in nothing less, nothing other, than the pleasure of tripping that sublimity up and watching it fall flat on its face.
9. awareness of the greater evil, a readiness to riot, a mistrust of everything one respects. There are people who complain about youth’s lack of ideals, but who, in the moment when they must act, automatically come to the same decision as anyone who, from a very healthy mistrust of ideas, reinforces their gentle power with a blackjack.

Oh well, I made it to the end. I took Diane's advice and just tried to push through this section in big chunks and it is a better way to read the final part as the chapters do clearly follow on from each other, unlike how they seemed to jump around introducing us to new characters and new ideas for the first part of the novel.

I can't say I took much from this final instalment, I didn't find myself highlighting any passages I just wanted to get to the end.

I was interested in Agathe, I found her character intriguing but I wasn't all that interested in her conversations with Ulrich I found her internal insights more interesting.

The same as Book I found the visit to the mental hospital to be the standout scene in this volume, so descriptive with a real sense of time and place. I think I liked it because it was so real and tangible in a book full of ideas and little action.

All in all, I'm glad I read it, but it's not a standout novel in my mind and if Musil had lived to finish it, I have no doubt he would have dragged it out much further than I would have been willing to follow.

I finally finished also and again thanks to Diane's advice to just push through rather than attempt to digest in smaller sections.
I found the book to be very fulfilling in moments as it has a very unique structure and a dense writing style. I liked some of the characters, some of the situations and some of the arguments, and not others. However, that didn't seem to be the point. I am struck by the fact that after 1700 pages, that so little "progressed". I suspect that lack of progression is one of the themes of the novel, that there is actually little progression in human interactions. Ulrich's dialectic in particular did not seem to build on itself, each argument seemed to stand alone. The actionless man, the man without qualities, definitely comes through but all the academic reviews speak to how the book informs the world leading up to the world wars, and I am not sure that our host of characters brought me much closer to insight on that front. Also, all the academic reviews speak to Musil's inability to finish the novel after decades of trying, but I wonder if he didn't want to finish it, could not in fact finish it without giving up in despair that the novel would never be what he had in mind. If finished, the book would become something separate from him and I suspect he couldn't handle such a divorce. Having spent so much time in the reading of this book I am afraid that my reading did not do the book justice. However, I know I will not return to it. I hope that the book will grow a bit in the far reaches of my memory. We will see.

I feel a huge sense of achievement in having finished this book. I was determined to do so before the end of the year, and, like others, I felt that i appreciated it more when I devoted time to reading it in big chunks. The final party, when at last there was the thought that some momentous decision about the "Parallel Action" was about to take place, was the most delicious satire on the moribund state of the Empire. The reader is aware that the jubilee will never take place because the start of the war meant the end of the Empire. There are multiple hints about the build up of the military in neighbouring countries and General Stumm's obsession with getting more armaments for the Austrian army, but it is left to the reader to contemplate how unaware the protagonists were to the impending catastrophe.
There are just so many layers to this book, I am in awe of the erudition of Musil. His background in military and then scientific circles followed by studies in philosophy meant a unique viewpoint and his method of conveying his ideas through such a massive tome is so impressive.