SOURCE: "Experimental Utopias: The Man without Qualities," in Robert Musil, The Continuum Publishing Company, 1988, pp. 111-30.

In the following excerpt, Bangerter outlines the principal themes of The Man without Qualities.

All of Musil's other works, including Young Törless, the novellas, the plays, and the essays, can be interpreted as preliminary studies to his monumental unfinished novel The Man without Qualities. In each creation, the author tested variations of ideas about man's relationship to the world, his self-concept, and the possibilities for realizing greater fulfillment and more perfect humanity within the context of life's experience. The analysis of the human condition, with special reference to the role of the thinking individual in modern technological society, is the common denominator of his literary art and his theoretical writings. The Man without Qualities is the grand culminating experiment in his creative-analytic process of exploring the unfixed domain of mortal potentiality...