This large two-part novel is primarily an unfinished philosophical essay whose frame is only the pretext of an intellectual marathon where everything is systematically questioned. Musil suffers although the length and persists to be reasonable and graceful through the pages, but why? It is quite disturbing at the end of the one thousand five hundredth page to not find a good reason for his obcession. The man without qualities knows he can not be superman and spreads without indulging in long lines to demonstrate the difficulty of being modern when one is down to earth.
Ultimately, although the shadow of the plane Nietzche absurd life of our man without qualities, this book also puts us in a time on the rails of fascist ideology. In Austria, the nationalist premise crossed the mountains and this book helps to understand the intellectual torpor occur when Hitler.
In any case, I do not agree with the previous comment: The book is far from intense, it is even dull. Finally, I doubt that the author would have left published in his lifetime as a work unfinished. These long page show just vertigo of modernity in German (though Sartre's Nausea is both more digestible and more powerful!).
So this reading is not recommended unless looking for something specific. But one wonders why the author has simmered for twenty years so laborious a work without ever decide to burn ...
