The Man Without Qualities

By: Robert Musil

Narrated by: John Telfer

In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.

A classic of the 20th century, Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) is endlessly thought-provoking, insightful and stimulating. Part satire, part visionary epic, part intellectual tour de force, it is a work of immeasurable importance. In fact, The Man Without Qualities is one of the peaks of European modernist literature, along with Joyce’s Ulysses and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, though with its own distinct character.

First and foremost, it is a novel where the ‘plot’ largely provides the riverbank down which the river can flow—fortunate with a work that, despite its considerable length, is unfinished! This may explain why it is less known, less read and less championed than its more famous peers, but those who do take the trouble to dive in are astonished. For a start, though often dense in content, it is generally accessible and often a delight to read—furthermore, it is both engrossing and fun. It is not surprising that Musil (1880-1942) was contemporaneous with Freud, whose psychoanalytic ideas emerge in various ways throughout the novel. So do the shades of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others who provide a philosophical backdrop—this is a great novel of ideas.

There are curiosities also, such as the sex-murderer Moosbrugger, who casts a dark but fascinating shadow over Ulrich’s society. And there is a variety of women with whom Ulrich interacts. There are girlfriends of passing involvement, such as Leona and Bonadea; there is Clarisse, wife of a close friend, and Diotima, seemingly a pillar of Viennese society. And his sister Agathe. They all act as challenging foils in any number of ways to tempt and undermine Ulrich’s sense of who he is.

Musil began writing The Man Without Qualities in 1921 and was still writing and revising it at his death (in Switzerland) in 1942. It is divided into three parts, which were published by 1933 though an English translation of all three parts did not appear until 1961. This recording features the latest (and exemplary) translation by Sophie Wilkins. In addition, it contains 20 chapters, prolonging part III, which were discovered in the mass of papers decades after Musil’s death. He intended to include them, but ultimately held them back for minor revisions.

This remarkable book, available for the first time on audio, is superbly read by John Telfer, who reflects the ‘decaying fin de siècle’ world as the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the old order, slides into oblivion.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©1995 Alfred A. Knopf (P)2022 Ukemi Productions Ltd

Great voice performance

The book is quite accessible in this form. The voice performance was great all the way through.

An Extraordinary Literary Achievement

I read this book as a young man and found it full of beguiling stories and ideas. Now, listening to it as an elderly man, it still fascinates and inspires me.

Incredible performance

The book itself is its own taste, but the performance was incredible. This was assigned in my college philosophy class years ago, and I didn’t even try to read it. Even in this format it was daunting but rewarding.

A Masterpiece

One of the towering achievements of the modern novel. It remains unfinished. An abridged reading would give any listener a sense of the whole, but the whole is magnificently philosophical, post-romantic, modern, and urban. Not a single thing about it felt pastoral or lyric. As a view into the start of the horrors of the 20th century and beyond, unparalleled.

Beautiful!

Robert Musil's great unfinished masterwork is here wonderfully translated into English and extremely well read by John Telfer. Loaded with irony and shot-through with humor and essayistic erudition, this book is a pleasure to read and to listen to.

An unmatched intellectual epic

One of the most important events ever in the world of audiobooks. In print this is two gigantic volumes of dense social commentary on the last days of the Austrian empire, and how many people are really going to get through that? But the audio simply takes you along on the journey, making it easy to glide through the less rewarding parts and spend time revisiting the chapters intriguing that you want to memorize every word. The reflections on the nature of modernity, relations between lovers, rationality and poetry, the human mind, and other profound questions mixed in with human stories and conversations really raise this above ordinary literature.
The narration is a good balance of the lively and engaging without being exaggerated or excessive. Very listenable.

A writer WITH qualities

Robert Musil is not a name many people will know outside Austria and some other European countries. A mathematician who studied under Mach, Musil was an unusual mixture of scientist and artist and this, to me, shows in his masterpiece The Man Without Qualities.

I bought The Man Without Qualities many years ago and started it many times, but could never get past the first several chapters. Perhaps it was the daunting size of the story, or perhaps it was the nature of the story itself, with the existential angst of Nietzsche overwhelming and threatening to overflow out of the pages. In fact, I would get trapped after reading the first paragraph and spend days contemplating the depth of the ideas. This, it seems to me, is the great merit of this book-the emotive and compelling narrative that makes you think and feel about your thoughts and feelings. The character development is unusual in the sense that it’s like joining a conversation halfway through, learning some naughty secrets about someone, and then fluttering off to another conversation elsewhere. Morals and feelings are dissected more than discussed, giving you the feeling of witnessing a vivisection of civilization at the dawn of the 20th century and moments before the fall into barbarism. Musil is a master at directing the reader’s attention to the clash of the old and new, to ways of looking at things that might have been mundane up until that point. If you enjoy this, then you will enjoy the book.

And for the narrator, well….he is a genius! His reading style is perfect for the highbrow nature of the story and characters (politicians, upper class, military etc etc) and pulls off their voices with great success. He creates a wonderful atmosphere in his delivery that, as I mentioned above, makes you feel like a fly on the wall in one of the conversations.

This is a long listen and although I did find myself drifting off into reveries at times, and missing part of the narration, I kept a paper copy of the story handy or an Ebook version so I could highlight or bookmark areas I could go back to later and contemplate at leisure.

All in all, this book and performance will be one to both remember and revisit long after you finish it (note: the book itself was never finished so you end like a mountain climber on a precipice, trying to recover your balance, with the wind of the story at your back, and the possible endings in front of you)
Obviously everything this review has said is subjective and comes down to taste, so I leave it up to the good reader to decide.

Whole is less than sum of the parts

I can understand why this book shows up on lists of highly rated novels. There is much to admire. I can just as easily understand why it is little read or known. It is dauntingly long. The book has an overall cool tone — analytical, ironic, overly intellectualized. The book will drift into sidebars of philosophy, sociology, psychology and politics that bring any narrative flow to a halt. Lot and lots of talk about abstractions of all kinds. And a robust knowledge of Austrian and European history is often required to make some passages and events meaningful or interesting. If you found The Magic Mountain uncongenial for any of these reasons, MWQ is far more extreme in these respects.

Yet individual chapters can be masterfully written, with some occasional overwriting. But the sweep is so vast, the digressions so disruptive, that it never really gels to a whole. This was a work of great ambition, but a bit more focus would make it more accessible.

A man without interest

To judge from the early chapters (I could suffer no more) of this very long (yet unfinished, apparently) book the titular man without qualities is also, sadly, without restraint. Verbose without mercy when expressing his unfailingly dull views about equally dull subjects, he is relentless.

A trifle of little interest expanded to gargantuan proportions, this book is surely one of 20th century literature's greatest marathons of tedium.

If you are inclined to tackle a great project in your reading (or audio book listening) then choose Proust. Don't waste your time and interest on a turgid relic that belongs under a thick dust cover.