Burton Pike, editor and translator of Robert Musil’s titanic though unfinished novel, The Man Without Qualities, discusses the philosophical and aesthetic ideas circulating in pre-war Viennese society as depicted in the novel. Podcast here. The discussion bears a striking resemblance to Percy’s concerns — no surprise there. Also check out David Auerbach’s commentary on Pike’s…
H/T to a kindred spirit “Infrequent literary reflections by an analytic philosopher” for bringing the slowly but surely growing secondary literature to my attention. Since it was through Kafka that my latent philosophical impulse was first generated, I’ve always wanted to write a piece on some aspect of his work. I have however been granted…
Here is a review by David Winters on Mark Reed’s recently published Robert Musil and the NonModern. There’s something about The Man Without Qualities that seems to resist conclusive criticism. Something not so much unfinished as uniquely continuous; infinite. The reason the novel is unlike anything else you’ll ever read is because it goes on reading itself…
manwithoutqualities 