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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/191940.The_Man_Without_Qualities_Vol_1_A_Sort_of_Introduction_and_Pseudo_Reality_Prevails?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Man Without Qualities Vol. 1: A Sort of Introduction and Pseudo Reality Prevails" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1172574290m/191940.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/191940.The_Man_Without_Qualities_Vol_1_A_Sort_of_Introduction_and_Pseudo_Reality_Prevails?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Man Without Qualities Vol. 1: A Sort of Introduction and Pseudo Reality Prevails</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16747.Robert_Musil">Robert Musil</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21913954?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>There are different kinds of funny. The category this book fits into includes having a smile on the face throughout, bursts of hilarity, and that serious use of comedy which reveals the absurdity of human behaviour. Written un the context of thickening fascist Europe, it's a remarkable mirror on life today. So easily the lusts of genitals, power and cruelty blend seamlessly with lofty idealisms. Entire schools of philosophy are ridiculed gently, or more accurately what is ridiculed is the nugatory uptake of these civilised markers by bourgeois minds that deal with neat snippets of unthreatening and watered down niceness. In some ways reminiscent of Mann's The Magic Mountain, here the delusions of historical intervention into an ideology of progress are a key focus. <br/> As today, the loss of values gives rise to absurd metaphysical beliefs in the soul, the lofty spirit, the future, the past, science and rationalism, irrationlism, superstition, pompous pontificating, the maintenance of a savage social order, all the necessary elements of fascism, and something hovering my absence (without qualities) that may provide hope but of which it would be folly to write for all that is written and thought is ossified into trinkets and ornaments. <br/> I shall now buy the complete work, including the incomplete Volumes, for less than ten pounds, and delight in reading Volume 1 again. Oh joy, and what a find is Musil. <br/> <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/863801?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>