Musil

What do you think of this book?

Possibly the greatest in the limited but fascinating genre of the novel-as-an-excuse-to.expose-my-philosophical-thesis

My father had me read it when I was 16 and thought that I was hot shit. It was like a revelation

Was it the English translation?

The italian one by Anita Rho, Gabriella Benedetti and Laura Castoldi. I'll bump with more attention whoring since Musil threads are always hard to ignite.
I remember reading the first volume in about four months, and the second in five days. We went skiing with my friends and my girlfriend in the north of the country, and by the second day I had decided to stay indoor all day to read. It was almost like a rapture, I would finish a page, consider that I had understood almost nothing of the ideas exposed and I would get so excited to have found someone so unbelievably intelligent, in my eyes at the time, that I just wanted to read more and more. I remeber one night my friend were discussing some part of Plato we had done in school, and being shocked by the sudden of realization of how banal their discourse was compared to the character's. It made me want to start writing and It made me want to never try to write anything ever, at the same time. When I finished the novel and discovered that it wasn't complete I almost hated Musil. Looking back at it, it's probably the best ending it could have ever got.

Just finished book one a few weeks ago. Musil is fantastic. The depth of observation and introspection he pulls from what amounts to mundane social interactions is what's most striking about the work.

I'm not sure there's another book quite like it. The nearest I can find is possibly The Magic Mountain. It's Ulysses tier stuff. Not in terms of difficulty but depth.

Should substitute Gr in the meme trilogy

>translations
>in the meme trilogy

Musil has only recently been made available to the English language.
He is an author one could add to their collection of "unfinished masterpieces".
Some authors inspire you to read, others; not to.
Some authors quench a thirst, others satiate.
Musil clearly defines the obtuse, the opaque and the vague. He is one of few authors that require the reader to write a response, if only for their own benefit.

I just finished The Magic Mountain two months ago and i loved it. I felt it was one of those very few books that in my opinion deserve the title of masterwork and that's something i've only ever felt while reading Moby Dick, Ulysses, The Brothers Karamazov and maybe War and Peace.

So my question is: what makes you say the nearest i can find is the Magic Mountain?

Also could anyone give me a brief description of the main theme's of the book?

I have a 25 euro gift card from a great book store and i know they have it, so it's either going to be this or Don Quixote.

The magic mountain has a lot of intellectual debate between characters, I guess the similarity user saw was based mostly around that. I'd say that they also share the same atmosphere of bored stillness. Something that's best summarized by the title of the first 500 pages: The same things return.