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3.55 AVERAGE
3.55 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying, Homophobia, Sexual violence
This is such a controversial book that it makes writing a review difficult, but I certainly won't bury the lead by hiding the fact that this book fascinates me. I've read it several times in English and in German, and I'll probably go back to it again.
Every time I've read it has been at a different time in my life and so I've read it quite differently.
The first time, I was in high school and the pure angst and homoeroticism of it was perfect for my emo teen self just starting to form my own personality and sexual identity. I was starved for anything that reflected my feelings of detachment and a churning inner world peculiar to young adults. Young Törless perfectly fit into that niche for me.
The next time I remember reading it was at Uni while I was taking a lot of literature courses and was in a better position to appreciate the technical aspects of it, e.g. Musil's turns of phrase, his use of description to build atmosphere, the twists and turns in Törless's moods and the way they colored his worldview.
This latest read-through, though, has circled me back around to what I found so appealing as a sixteen-year-old: the way in which Musil was able to capture in words the emotions I felt at that age but couldn't have described.
~"Sitting at the open window at night and feeling abandoned by everyone, feeling different from the grown-ups, misunderstood by every laugh and every mocking glance, being unable to explain to anybody what one already felt oneself to be, and yearning for her, the one who would understand."~ (p.42)
~"His life was focused on each single day. For him each night meant a void, a grave, extinction. The capacity to lay oneself down to die at the end of every day, without thinking anything of it, was something he had not yet acquired." (p.43)
~"But now Törless became stubborn. He himself felt that he had not put his case well, but both the antagonism and the misguided approval he had met with gave him a sense of haughty superiority over these older men who seemed to know so little about the inner life of a human being." (p.209)
One of the main focuses of Törless's inner turmoil is framed around his frustration that irrational numbers are just that: an enigma within the 'rational' field of mathematics that paradoxically has to be taken on faith. The very ineffability of the human condition disturbs him just as much as the irrational numbers and he struggles throughout the novel to get to a point of understanding. Understanding the irrational numbers, understanding the inner workings of Basini's mind and emotions. And he can't. Beineberg offers what I, from my adult perspective, would agree with is the only possible reconciliation of this very element of the unknown in life that Törless remains too immature to grasp:
~"Really, we ought to have despaired long ago, for in all fields our knowledge is streaked with such crevasses--nothing but fragments drifting in a fathomless ocean. But we do not despair. We go on feeling as safe as if we were on firm ground. If we didn't have this solid feeling of certainty, we would kill ourselves in desperation about the wretchedness of our intellect."
Beineberg is quite extreme, but nonetheless I think there is something to the notion that to be mature one has to accept that we can't know everything.
Now, to the elephant in the room.
This is not a pleasant book to read. No one, not even our protagonist is sympathetic when it comes to the torture of their classmate, who they dehumanize utterly. Even the very humanness that Törless tries to uncover and parse through, the "something behind it all" (p.190) is completely disconnected from the person, from Basini, for whom he ultimately feels no compassion.
While the brutality is by no means graphic, the implications are grotesque and disturbing and not for the faint of heart, not least because one can easily imagine such things happening outside just the fictional (thought reportedly semi-autobiographical) world presented here.
Bullying and torture are ugly things, and Musil does not try to glorify them here. If anything, Törless's very detachment is the most disturbing element of all. That being said, if you use fiction as a means of escaping the brutality of reality, this isn't the book for you.
This isn't even a traditional coming-of-age story, nor, arguably, does Törless get a clear character arc. But that seems to be the point. Development isn't a linear thing, and as with its successor in the anti-coming-of age sub-genre, The Catcher in the Rye, Young Törless is a snapshot of the darker, less bubblegum side of adolescence, and a work with a point as of yet just out of my grasp, in the periphery of my understanding.
And it continues to fascinate me.
Until the next ride on the carousel, Herr Musil.
Every time I've read it has been at a different time in my life and so I've read it quite differently.
The first time, I was in high school and the pure angst and homoeroticism of it was perfect for my emo teen self just starting to form my own personality and sexual identity. I was starved for anything that reflected my feelings of detachment and a churning inner world peculiar to young adults. Young Törless perfectly fit into that niche for me.
The next time I remember reading it was at Uni while I was taking a lot of literature courses and was in a better position to appreciate the technical aspects of it, e.g. Musil's turns of phrase, his use of description to build atmosphere, the twists and turns in Törless's moods and the way they colored his worldview.
This latest read-through, though, has circled me back around to what I found so appealing as a sixteen-year-old: the way in which Musil was able to capture in words the emotions I felt at that age but couldn't have described.
~"Sitting at the open window at night and feeling abandoned by everyone, feeling different from the grown-ups, misunderstood by every laugh and every mocking glance, being unable to explain to anybody what one already felt oneself to be, and yearning for her, the one who would understand."~ (p.42)
~"His life was focused on each single day. For him each night meant a void, a grave, extinction. The capacity to lay oneself down to die at the end of every day, without thinking anything of it, was something he had not yet acquired." (p.43)
~"But now Törless became stubborn. He himself felt that he had not put his case well, but both the antagonism and the misguided approval he had met with gave him a sense of haughty superiority over these older men who seemed to know so little about the inner life of a human being." (p.209)
One of the main focuses of Törless's inner turmoil is framed around his frustration that irrational numbers are just that: an enigma within the 'rational' field of mathematics that paradoxically has to be taken on faith. The very ineffability of the human condition disturbs him just as much as the irrational numbers and he struggles throughout the novel to get to a point of understanding. Understanding the irrational numbers, understanding the inner workings of Basini's mind and emotions. And he can't. Beineberg offers what I, from my adult perspective, would agree with is the only possible reconciliation of this very element of the unknown in life that Törless remains too immature to grasp:
~"Really, we ought to have despaired long ago, for in all fields our knowledge is streaked with such crevasses--nothing but fragments drifting in a fathomless ocean. But we do not despair. We go on feeling as safe as if we were on firm ground. If we didn't have this solid feeling of certainty, we would kill ourselves in desperation about the wretchedness of our intellect."
Beineberg is quite extreme, but nonetheless I think there is something to the notion that to be mature one has to accept that we can't know everything.
Now, to the elephant in the room.
This is not a pleasant book to read. No one, not even our protagonist is sympathetic when it comes to the torture of their classmate, who they dehumanize utterly. Even the very humanness that Törless tries to uncover and parse through, the "something behind it all" (p.190) is completely disconnected from the person, from Basini, for whom he ultimately feels no compassion.
While the brutality is by no means graphic, the implications are grotesque and disturbing and not for the faint of heart, not least because one can easily imagine such things happening outside just the fictional (thought reportedly semi-autobiographical) world presented here.
Bullying and torture are ugly things, and Musil does not try to glorify them here. If anything, Törless's very detachment is the most disturbing element of all. That being said, if you use fiction as a means of escaping the brutality of reality, this isn't the book for you.
This isn't even a traditional coming-of-age story, nor, arguably, does Törless get a clear character arc. But that seems to be the point. Development isn't a linear thing, and as with its successor in the anti-coming-of age sub-genre, The Catcher in the Rye, Young Törless is a snapshot of the darker, less bubblegum side of adolescence, and a work with a point as of yet just out of my grasp, in the periphery of my understanding.
And it continues to fascinate me.
Until the next ride on the carousel, Herr Musil.
Fully enjoyed, especially the last third. Thoughtful nd dark, a philosophical slow burn that delightfully is mirroring the discussions on moral responsibility in my philosophy class