SOURCE: "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften," in Distinguished Outsider: Robert Musil and His Critics, Camden House, 1994, pp. 146-75.

In the following excerpt, Rogowski surveys the body of critical writings on The Man without Qualities.

Scholars of Germanistik seem to like books reputed to be difficult. Musil's Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften surely must rank among the books most written about in the field of literature in the German language. Ever since its republication under the editorship of Adolf Frisé in 1952, there has been a steady and incessant stream of articles, essays, and monographs on Musil's unfinished magnum opus from all sorts of different angles and perspectives. Given the sheer volume of criticism—now numbering in the hundreds, if not thou-sands, of works—it is surprising that there are few close readings of the novel that investigate its form or describe the nature of its language in detailed analysis. On the...