Robert Musil and the NonModern
Review Author: Burton Pike, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA, and co-translator (with Sophie Wilkins) of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities (Vintage, 1996).Review Content:"With exemplary depth and clarity this fine book analyzes Musil’s concept of “essayism” as Musil’s alternative approach to the concepts of Modernism on which philosophy has run aground. Freed, respecting Musil as a writer who had an informed philosophical background, places his way of thinking against rigorous analyses of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Habermas, Lyotard, Latour, Mach, Foucault, Derrida, and others. A major addition to Musil studies and philosophic discussion."Review Author: Ruth V. Gross, Professor of German and Department Head, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, North Carolina State University, USAReview Content:“Mark Freed's Robert Musil and the NonModern builds a strong case for including Musil among the giants of modern literature, precisely by challenging the basis of the modern. Musil's ‘Essayismus’, the philosophical view that permeates his great novel, becomes in Freed's reading, a device of ‘non-modernism,’ which questions existing formulas and finds the modern in the postmodern and the postmodern in the modern. Appealing to Lyotard and Latour as his guides, the author leads us to Musil via Habermas and Heidegger, in terms that are as clear as possible, given the terrain. The interplay of literature and philosophy shines forth in this work of great quality.”"With exemplary depth and clarity this fine book analyzes Musil's concept of "essayism" as Musil's alternative approach to the concepts of Modernism on which philosophy has run aground. Freed, respecting Musil as a writer who had an informed philosophical background, places his way of thinking against rigorous analyses of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Habermas, Lyotard, Latour, Mach, Foucault, Derrida, and others. A major addition to Musil studies and philosophic discussion." — Burton Pike, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA, and co-translator (with Sophie Wilkins) of Robert Musil'sThe Man Without Qualities(Vintage, 1996)."With exemplary depth and clarity this fine book analyzes Musil’s concept of “essayism” as Musil’s alternative approach to the concepts of Modernism on which philosophy has run aground. Freed, respecting Musil as a writer who had an informed philosophical background, places his way of thinking against rigorous analyses of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Habermas, Lyotard, Latour, Mach, Foucault, Derrida, and others. A major addition to Musil studies and philosophic discussion." — Burton Pike, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA, and co-translator (with Sophie Wilkins) of Robert Musil'sThe Man Without Qualities(Vintage, 1996)."Mark Freed'sRobert Musil and the NonModernbuilds a strong case for including Musil among the giants of modern literature, precisely by challenging the basis of the modern. Musil's 'Essayismus', the philosophical view that permeates his great novel, becomes in Freed's reading, a device of 'non-modernism,' which questions existing formulas and finds the modern in the postmodern and the postmodern in the modern. Appealing to Lyotard and Latour as his guides, the author leads us to Musil via Habermas and Heidegger, in terms that are as clear as possible, given the terrain. The interplay of literature and philosophy shines forth in this work of great quality." —Ruth V. Gross, Professor of German and Department Head, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, North Carolina State University, USA“Mark Freed'sRobert Musil and the NonModernbuilds a strong case for including Musil among the giants of modern literature, precisely by challenging the basis of the modern. Musil's 'Essayismus’, the philosophical view that permeates his great novel, becomes in Freed's reading, a device of 'non-modernism,’ which questions existing formulas and finds the modern in the postmodern and the postmodern in the modern. Appealing to Lyotard and Latour as his guides, the author leads us to Musil via Habermas and Heidegger, in terms that are as clear as possible, given the terrain. The interplay of literature and philosophy shines forth in this work of great quality.” —Ruth V. Gross, Professor of German and Department Head, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, North Carolina State University, USA