Man Without Qualities Reading Group

Starting October 13th

I will be co-leading a year-long reading group with

Samantha Rose Hill

, beginning on October 13th. We hope you will join us.

The blurb and details:

Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities: Modernity, Metaphor, and the Unfinishable Novel

Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities is a monumental exploration of modernity’s fractured self, set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of World War I. Written between 1918 and 1942, with parts published in 1930 and 1933 and much of the rest published posthumously between 1952–1957, this unfinished novel probes the existential and societal dilemmas of a world in flux. Musil, an engineer, mathematician, and student of the psychology of perception, anthropology, and philosophy, employs modernist techniques—stream of consciousness, non-linearity, essayism, and formal experimentation—to grapple with questions of identity, value, and the psychological and social forces that precipitated global conflict. In this year-long reading group, we will delve into Musil’s kaleidoscopic vision of a world where culture becomes a “homeland” transcending Austria and Europe.

Thomas Mann declared The Man Without Qualities, “a great work of prose” that vindicated their “deeply compromised epoch” through its “imagistic intellectuality.” George Steiner called the novel a rare counterpart to Proust, where “thought is form” and rigorous thinking mirrors the precision of a machine blueprint or algebraic proof. Through metaphor and a radical commitment to experimentation, Musil’s “comédie humaine” captures what Broch described as a “world totality,” embracing the infinite variables of reason and the irrational. Participants will explore how Musil’s formal innovations reflect the novel’s themes of uncertainty and possibility, engaging with its demands as a text that, in Steiner’s words, “honors its readers” with its intellectual and imaginative rigor.

Descend into Musil’s world, guided by Musil scholar and translator Genese Grill, author of The World as Metaphor in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (2012 & 2022) and Samantha Rose Hill, author of Hannah Arendt (2022) and What Remains with Genese Grill (2024).

When/where:

• Beginning October 13th

• Live zoom meetings

• Read-along discussion board

• Helpful Handouts

• Playbacks if you miss a meeting

• Full reading schedule breakdown

How:

• Enroll here

• $360/year long course

• If you’d like to join, but can’t afford the cost, just write to Sam and she’ll send you a pay-what-you-want link.