This was a book I randomly pulled off the shelf to bring on my little Christmas jaunt to visit family, simply because it looked like the right size that would allow me to finish it on the trip. It was an unexpected puzzling little piece. Part way through, I found that I didn't want to stop reading, in spite of the fact that it was a wee bit heavy in the thinking department. Basically, this is Torless` adolescent coming of age story in an eastern European military boarding school that chronicles his deep quest to try to understand the connection between his routine daily real world & all of the mental, psychological and sensual new revelations that continue to creep into his psyche. He is truly bothered by his inability to fill in the gaps between those 2 realms. While school mates of his are eagerly testing their own limits in learning to exert power over others, he is frantically trying to understand the mysterious forces that lead them to want to exert power in the first place. As I said earlier, this is a lot of deep thinking for a guy like me that merely reads to be entertained. But the places this book went were so unexpected, that I got hooked into it beyond my expectation. Musil's melding together of adolescent mob mentality, the metaphysical aspects of mathematics, morality, ethics, sexual exploration with a prostitute and with each other, and the study of one's soul is rather remarkable...& I never got completely lost in the psychological gymnastics! (Of course that was likely due to the fact that it was from the perspective of an adolescent teen, so there was hope for me.) Overall, a surprising little novella. Glad I chose it.... ( )

I did no enjoy nor relate to this book. Boys are mean, basically. I imagine men--at least those men that might be able to relate to a c1900 Austro-Hungarian boys' boarding school or a similar situation--might be able to relate to this much better and might find it much more moving.

Per the intro, Musil said that nothing in here didn't happen, essentially. But we all know kids can be cruel. Girls exclude, boys torment. And the boys in here do torment. Largely upper class kids sent to a boarding school with way too much unsupervised time to themselves. ( )

Robert Musil is one of my favorite authors and his story of Young Torless, published in 1906, is one reason. The novel reflects an obsession in this period with educational institutions and the oppressive impact they exert on personal development. While it is in the tradition of the German Bildungsroman, the novel of education, it is critical of educational system and the institutionalized coercion portrayed in the novel. In my reading experience I compared it with the experience of Philip Carey in Maugham's Of Human Bondage or other traditional British school novels (see Tom Brown). In the American tradition, one thinks of J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye as representing a protest against a social disciplining that is also a disciplining of sexuality. Sexual disciplining can often become the standard for other forms of discipline.

The novel tells the story of three students at an Austrian boarding school, Reiting, Beineberg and the titular young Törless. The three catch their classmate Basini stealing money from one of them and decide to punish him themselves instead of turning him in to the school authorities. They start an abusive process, first physically and then psychologically and sexually, while also blackmailing him by threatening to denounce him. While the treatment of Basini becomes openly sexual and increasingly sadistic, he nevertheless masochistically endures it all.

It is the moral and sexual confusion of young Torless that leads him to join Beineberg's and Reiting's degradation of Basini; he is both sexually attracted to Basini and Beineberg and repelled by them. Even though he is a willing participant he tells himself that he is merely trying to understand the gap between his rational self and his obscure irrational self. In a modern way he is both a disturbed and despairing observer of his own states of consciousness. Basini professes love for Törless and Törless begins to reciprocate, but he is ultimately repelled by Basini's unwillingness to stand up for himself. His disgust with Basini's passivity ultimately leads him in a curious way to stand up to Beineberg and Reiting. When the torment becomes unbearable, Törless secretly advises Basini alleviate his situation by confessing to the headmaster.

While an investigation is made, the only party to be found guilty is Basini. Törless makes a strange existential speech to the school authorities about the gap between the rational and irrational: "I said it seemed to me that at these points we couldn't get across merely by the aid of thought, and we needed another and more inward sort of certainty to get us to the other side, as you might say. We can't manage solely by means of thinking, I felt that in the case of Basini too." (p 208)
After he had finished, "When he had left the room, the masters looked at each other with baffled expressions." (p 212)
They decide he is of too refined an intellect for the institute, and suggest to his parents that he be privately educated, a conclusion that he comes to on his own.

Other subplots include Törless's experience with the local prostitute Božena, his encounter with his mathematics teacher, and his analysis of his parents' attitudes toward the world. The severity of the conditions makes one wonder about Musil's own experience. One important theme Musil also takes up is the Nietzschean idea of the dichotomy between Apollo and Dionysus. This can be seen in the "two worlds" (p 45) in which light is contrasted with dark, the controlled and disciplined intellect with more spontaneous sensuality.

Young Torless is an impressive short novel with a depth of meaning and character that often is not achieved in much longer works. It is a ( )

I've just read so many stories of public schools and the sadism of youths in the past that it seemed like a crime to overlook Musil's novel. It does not shock or surprise me in the least, which might be the reaction if I hadn't read quite so many accounts of 19th and early-20th century boys schools. Two things did surprise me, though.

1. The gun was described and placed there but never used because fuck Chekov, right?
2. Törless is a self-centred little prick and the narrative doesn't seem to criticize/even notice this at the end

But there was something I enjoyed about the unapologetic music. Pages and pages without dialogue, without events, without moving from a spot. Törless' heightened perception of reality where objects are so much more than themselves. It reminded me of something I feel when I read Hesse, and it affirms for me the power of that interior exploration which I can shy away from in my own writing for fear of it being uninteresting. Musil executes it so well. Often melancholic, but not always, and if it weren't midnight it would have sent me out for a walk through a park to let myself hold onto all of that just a little longer. ( )

What to do with the young man who so willingly abases himself? And those willing to abase him? That's the book in a nutshell. ( )