A Flurry of Inactivity

Musil the writer unearthed at least one precious gem in The Man Without Qualities vol. 1 though you could never wear it on your finger or your toe and your head is probably too small too, so that the crown will most likely topple and fall off at some point near the beginning of vol. 2. The reader is therefore advised to concentrate on vol. 1, a masterpiece that is best read very slowly, savored, where you’ll meet many brilliant men and women struggling with their identities in the pre-and-post war era of the earlier 20th century.

Musil’s vol. 1 insights on social status, the mechanics of politics, including god’s place in the otherwise natural order of things; the nature of art; the ambition of both women and men; the folly of nobility etc. etc. builds to a furious pitch in which World War I will soon be concluded and World War II commences sometime before the impoverished author dies, unable to complete vol. 2, in 1940 or thereabouts. The Man Without Qualities vol. 1 is quite possibly both the greatest 20thc novel ever written, and v.2 quite possibly the greatest failure having gone on and on and on page after brilliant page to its incompletion.

Musil died in a bathtub in Switzerland whie re-writing vol.2, according to his wife, a painter.

I too am re-writing today something someone else has written. I find myself for some reason hesitant, a bit sleepy, yawning over the over-long paragraphs already sent to me, knowing the writer personally and loving him dearly but concerned that he may have over-promised and under-delivered. So I put the manuscript aside and close my eyes for a little nap, entering what’s been already described for me by a preeminent scientist at Microsoft named Eric Horvitz as, “the post-epistemological world.”

A Writer needs to become either the kind of person who finishes something or who never starts something at the beginning.