My initial thought was: sure, I could read a book like that. Reader, I couldn't even finish half the article.
posted by rhooke at 4:55 AM on September 26 [8 favorites]

I¡¯ve tried at various points in my life to get all the way through Musil¡¯s The Man Without Qualities, which is similarly monumental, frustrating, and has the added bonuses of being both translated and unfinished.

There are some mountains that are better appreciated unclimbed.
posted by heyitsgogi at 5:22 AM on September 26 [2 favorites]

Yes, this sounds beautiful, and wonderfully fecund. I'll put it in the queue right after Ulysses and Proust.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 5:55 AM on September 26 [3 favorites]

heyitsgogi: "I¡¯ve tried at various points in my life to get all the way through Musil¡¯s The Man Without Qualities"

I bought a copy of the fancy reissued 2-volume set of this, at the Strand bookstore in Manhattan in the late 1990s. I still have it, and still haven't read it; it's still in the shrinkwrap!
posted by chavenet at 6:10 AM on September 26 [2 favorites]

I¡¯ve tried at various points in my life to get all the way through Musil¡¯s The Man Without Qualities.

Famously a novel I got so angry about not finishing that I had to give it away.

I¡¯ve had Mrs Macintosh on the To Read pile for a while. I¡¯ll give it a go. I mean, I thought Ducks, Newburyport was pretty funny.
posted by Thivaia 2.0 at 6:29 AM on September 26 [2 favorites]

May I suggest to you, if you are trying to read Musil's duology, to do so during a flight from the US to India in 2000, when portable music players were hard to come by, and in-flight entertainment was one bad movie for everyone, not a selection of movies to choose at your seat? I encourage you to make this your first international flight if possible, and to be completely unable to sleep.

With the qualification that I was, as the mathematicians among you will be able to tell, 25 years younger then, and even deafer to subtext and more ignorant of history than I am now, I have to say that, having read it, I have no sensation of being the richer for it, though also no regret. (And I did find it easier than some shorter books, not for want of trying; I still haven't read, and not for want of trying, Canetti's Auto-da-F¨¦, that I started around the same time. Another book I read at the same time, and remember as more rewarding, was Stephen Dixon's Frog, which I, or at least 25-years-ago I, recommends.) The only thing that has stuck with me is that the narrator of Musil's book compares his lover's nipple to a poppy leaf. Checking the wording on Google Books, I find that he later compares a nipple to coral. That is two more nature-based nipple metaphors than I am used to in my books.

The book under review sounds like it will be either amazing or insufferable, or, as the review suggests, more likely both. I'm off to see if I can hunt down a copy.
posted by It is regrettable that at 6:30 AM on September 26 [6 favorites]

May I suggest to you, if you are trying to read Musil's duology, to do so during a flight from the US to India in 2000, when portable music players were hard to come by, and in-flight entertainment was one bad movie for everyone, not a selection of movies to choose at your seat? I encourage you to make this your first international flight if possible, and to be completely unable to sleep.

Similar but different story for me trying to read Howl by William S Burroughs. I had been trying for quite a while but couldn¡¯t get past a page or two , and then when I went back to it the next day or so I would need to reread what I had read the day before. I couldn¡¯t understand the narrator and his stream of consciousness, I¡¯m sure in large part because WSB was high on LSD and writing this book, although I thought it was a interesting book from what I had heard. The director of the department I worked for at University had known WSB somewhat back in the day and would see him at parties here and there. Let me tell you, Boss some wild stories about WSB. I am no literary genius and just try to read different things to the best of my ability, especially something so controversial and impactful in American literature. Anyway, many years ago I went on vacation to a remote place in Eastern Europe and there really wasn¡¯t any technology available, like phones, a television or even a radio at the place we were staying. I had insomnia one night and finally around two in the morning. I got up and took the book into another room. Something about having insomnia and nothing else to do made the book easier to read and very enlightening. I finished the book in a couple days, and I¡¯m glad I did because it was like nothing I¡¯d ever read before.

If I have a vacation in a remote place or a long flight, I can count on getting insomnia, which now I¡¯m quite excited about so I¡¯ll pick up a copy of a Marguerite Young book beforehand.
posted by waving at 7:24 AM on September 26 [2 favorites]

waving: "Howl by William S Burroughs"

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by faulty memories...
posted by chavenet at 7:41 AM on September 26 [9 favorites]

"And, competing in the category of 'Academic/Non-Fiction', it's Claude Levi-Strauss's 'Elementary Structures of Kinship', for the win!"

It's been putting me to sleep for the past 50+ years... on the other hand, I enjoyably zoomed through "Triste Tropiques" several times!
posted by aldus_manutius at 7:50 AM on September 26 [2 favorites]

The NYRB is the best journal in the English speaking world. Every issue has a truly amazing series of essays and reviews of so many disparate topics. I learn so much each issue, and sometimes accidentally pick up one from months before, and learn even more. I think I've subscribed since 1990? 1988?. Anyway, receiving it in the mail 20 x a year is one of the highlights of my life.

Urge you all to pick up an issue at the bookstore, and give it a try.

Just a PSA for all.
posted by WatTylerJr at 9:56 AM on September 26 [4 favorites]

I am really torn about this novel. On the one hand, many of the sentences that get quoted from it are really great. On the other, just as you can have a surfeit of, eg, delicious chocolate candy, you can have a surfeit of amazing sentences. On the third hand, it looks like a novel with comic names. On the fourth hand, some of the articles about the novel remind me of Elizabeth Bowen or Patrick White, both of whom I do profoundly Do Not Enjoy, too much zany ironic horror with the one and too much plain ironic horror with the other.

What is it with important mid-century novels in English? It's like they're all either super-duper misogynist rape novels or zany-names-lots-of-imagery-people-die-for-pointless-comic-reasons novels. Or, in the sixties, often both.

I always feel like anything extremely high culture between about 1930 and 1990 is exceedingly unlikely to sit well with me.
posted by Frowner at 9:58 AM on September 26 [2 favorites]

I do like this bit:

These extended hallucinations, which pass beyond the baroque and quickly overwhelm the fledgling story, become the signature style of the novel as it multiplies (or perhaps metastasizes).

And now that I've gone and pasted it down ...

METAFILTER: These extended hallucinations, which pass beyond the baroque and quickly overwhelm the fledgling story, become the signature style of the novel as it multiplies (or perhaps metastasizes).
posted by philip-random at 10:05 AM on September 26 [2 favorites]

The NYRB is aces, though, and their children's book reprint line is absolutely tops.
posted by Frowner at 10:15 AM on September 26 [3 favorites]

chavnet, I have that exact same version, which my uncle gave me as a present in the late 90s, when he was living in NYC. He may have bought it at the Strand, I know he introduced me to their labyrinths when I first visited him.

It is regrettable that I was on a flight from Bangalore, through Deli, then Vienna, to the US in, I think, 1999, and there is a more than decent chance I had the first volume of that book with me, as I was definitely working my way through it then.

Do we need to find some place to meet up and make sure we don't already know each other?
posted by heyitsgogi at 10:58 AM on September 26 [2 favorites]

Just coming in here to say that Musil's Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften is great and a fun read!

As for Miss MacIntosh, it also sounds great! Long novels can be a lot of fun, but I must admit that I've definitely taken to them more as I've gotten older.
posted by The_transcontinental at 1:39 PM on September 26 [1 favorite]

quite awhile back, a copy came into the used bookstore where i worked. i didn't know a thing about it, but out of curiosity, i started reading it on my lunch breaks. i think it took me most of a year, & i'm a fast reader.

you have to really love good, rhythmic prose, 'cause that's all it is.
posted by graywyvern at 1:01 PM on September 27 [1 favorite]

chavenet: "waving: "Howl by William S Burroughs"

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by faulty memories..."

I meant to say Naked Lunch by Burroughs, not Howl. Its been a long time and my mind is definitely losing its touch, such as it is.
posted by waving at 5:18 PM on September 27 [2 favorites]

I definitely would not want to read the book, but I did enjoy reading about it.

(And like above, I guess that could also be Metafilter: I definitely would not want to read the book, but I did enjoy reading about it.)
posted by blue shadows at 10:17 PM on September 27 [1 favorite]

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