Robert Musil Forgotten Plays Inspired His Greatest Work of Fiction

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18 points·DyslexicAtheist··6 comments

I don't know anything about literature. For me, Man Without Qualities seemed incredibly boring (in the English translation I read). Is there some trick to this? Am I missing something?

Are you missing context perhaps? How much do you know about the late Hapsburg empire, or German thought in the early 20th Century. (I don't claim to know that much, but enough to make sense of some the book that I couldn't otherwise.) A very intelligent friend didn't make much of it, I recall.

The trick is to read literature that you like. You can always (or never) come back to the stuff that didn't click.

I don't know anything about literature.

You know what you like -- which is enough, especially if you are reading for pleasure.

In my experience, discussing a work, or reading about its context or meaning, often deepens my enjoyment of it. So maybe one "trick" is to engage with others. But at some point you can't go throwing your precious spare time into something that doesn't fundamentally engage you.

I no longer let it bother me if I don't "get" something that many others enjoy. Conversely, I have a number of favorite books (and movies and music) that I rarely recommend to others, because I've learned that few people share my personal response to them.

I remember reading it in 2015 and identifying with main character; a 32-year-old seemingly-talented man who pursued the trappings of success in socially-validated directions like the study of math and engineering but ultimately has nothing to show for it besides a comfortable, hedonistic lifestyle in a technocratic, bureaucratic, meeting-prone society that teeters at the edge a coming collapse which will render all these meetings irrelevant.

Ohhhhhh. No wonder I didn't like it!

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