Binston Birchill’s Reviews > The Sleepwalkers > Status Update

The Realist is different from the first two novels. It’s a novel that has segments of philosophical inquiry (Disintegration of Values), like the historical essay sections of War and Peace

He who is mentally lonely can always escape into romanticism, and from spiritual loneliness there is always a way of escape into the intimacy of sex- but for ultimate loneliness, for immediate loneliness, there is no longer any escape into symbols.

…

The lonelier a man becomes, the more detached he is from the value-system in which he lives, the more obviously are his actions determined by the irrational.

When desires and aims meet and merge, when dreams begin to foreshadow the great moments and crises of life,the road narrows then into darker gorges,and the prophetic dream of death enshrouds the man who has hitherto walked dreaming in sleep: all that has been, all aims, all desires,fit past him once more as they do before the eyes of a dying man,and one can well-nigh call it chance if that road does not end in death.

P259-61, great sample of what Broch is about.

Once the character sketches are done the character study really begins, Broch turns into the Broch of The Death of Virgil.