Robert Musil

[RICHARD ROMEO]

This interesting paragraph from The Man Without Qualities:

..."he attended as an observer, like a protruding offshoot of the iron 
machinery of the state, which ends in buttons and metal trim.  There is 
always  something ghostly about living constantly in a well-ordered 
state.  You cannot step into the street or drink a glass of water or get 
in a streetcar without touching the balanced levers of a gigantic 
apparatus of laws and interrelations, setting them in motion or letting 
them maintain you in your peaceful existence; one knows hardly any of 
these levers, which reach deep into the inner workings and, coming out 
the other side, lose themselves in a network whose structure has never 
yet been unraveled by anyone.  So one denies their existence, just as the 
average citizen denies the air, maintaining that it is empty space.  But 
all these things that one denied, these colorless, odorless, tasteless, 
weightless, and morally indefinable things such as water, air, space, 
money, and the passing of time, turn out in truth to be the most 
important things of all, and this gives life a certain spooky quality.  
Sometimes a man may be seized by panic, helpless as in a dream, thrashing 
about wildly like an animal that has blundered into the imcomprehensible 
mechanism of a net.  Such was the effect of the policeman's buttons on 
the workingman (espousing venomous spittle upon the Great Idea-my 
insertion), and it was at this moment that the arm of the state, feeling 
that it was not being respected in the proper manner, proceded to make an 
arrest."

Anybody know of any good studies of Musil-shelled out 50 bucks for the 
above-any good crit on Musil anybody know of.