However, The Man Without Qualities is over 1000 pages, hundreds of pages of which are given over to quite rigorous philosophical essays. Yasunari Kawabata’s books do not go anywhere, they almost completely lack plot, but they work as short and evocative pieces. Now, this would not be too much of a problem if it were shorter. The novel lacks what I would call narrative movement, or momentum. The thing is, I couldn’t help feeling that I would have been even more interested in what I was being told if I had actually been going somewhere that the feeling of, the frustration caused by, immobility compromised my enjoyment and distracted my attention. One of my main criticisms of the book is that reading it felt like being stuck in a traffic jam with an interesting and engaging companion. But did I enjoy the experience? To a large extent, yes, but I have some reservations. I, to continue my metaphor, have taken all of Musil’s intellectual cocks and come out of it, aching and sore, but alive. It is to novels what The World’s Biggest Gangbang is to porn: stupidly ambitious and inevitably exhausting. It is, along with Ulysses and In Search Of Lost Time, part of the holy trinity of overly long and difficult novels. The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil has been on my to-read list for about two years.
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