“Why, then, aren’t we realists?” Ulrich asked himself. Neither of them was, neither he nor she: their ideas and their conduct had long left no doubt of that; but they were nihilists and activists, sometimes one and sometimes the other, whichever happened to come up.
—Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

In the realm of the aesthetic … even imperfection and lack of completion have their value.
—Robert Musil, “Address at the Memorial Service for Rilke in Berlin” (1927)

The Austrian novelist Robert Musil (1880– 1942) occupies a peculiar position in the pantheon of great twentieth-century writers. He is admired by literati for a handful of astringent modernist fictions, especially for his first novel, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless (The Bewilderment ...