I Tackle a Teutonic Blockbuster...

It's perhaps unfair to attempt to review a book after reading only a few pages, but I was amazed to find myself reading Robert Musil's "Man without Qualities" last week, after learning in "The Economist" that a high-powered woman leading a British business consultancy assigned it to her reports.

MWQ was huge when I was in grad school in the 90s, or at least Knopf had a brilliant publicist; the sublimely detailed two volume hardcover was everywhere, soon to languish in Daedalus catalogs.

The experience of reading it...Hmm.

The qualities are emerging...slowly. Very slowly.

It is Teutonic, detached, and as microscopic in its observations as one would expect would from a book compared (and here the publicist has branded my consciousness) to "Ulysses" and "Remembrance of Things Past" (or is that "In Search of Lost Time", class?).

1300 pages to go. I shall read on and report further!

XO

Syl

Comments

[Kimura]

Both titles are being used for English editions of Proust, I believe; the first translation was called "In search of lost time", but the latest version from Penguin is re-titled as "Remembrance of things past". I could be wrong though...


What's your take on Anais Nin?