Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings

Readers who seek a comprehensive collection of Robert Musil's work - exclusive of his opus, "The Man Without Qualities" - will be well-served by this edition. It contains most of his short stories, some of his non-fiction writings, and most importantly, his first novel, "Young Torless" - an early look at Musil's craft which also introduces us to the themes contained in his later works. The bare plot of "Torless" reads deceptively like one of those bad teen dramas on the WB network: it is the tale of secrets and betrayals among schoolboys, here in the turn-of-the-century Austro-Hungarian Empire. But in Musil's hands, as always, it is a work of deep philosophical ideas; he uses the relationships among the boys to explore the nature of power - how it is gained, how it corrupts, how it destroys. We are required to confront the problem of truth and the fallacy of objective morality. The disillusionment that Young Torless feels when his teacher is unable to explain the theory of imaginary numbers - telling his pupil that he must merely "accept" that they exist - is the same skepticism which Musil and the other modernist writers felt for all ideas, whether science, history, politics or faith. It was through literature that Musil believed that he might bring order to the world, that he might re-create ideas. For any reader who wishes an introduction to the variety of Robert Musil's work, this is a good start.