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The Confusions of Young Torless (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 833.912
EAN: 9780142180006
ISBN: 0142180009
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: September 01, 2001
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Release Date: August 28, 2001
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Editorial Review:
"Musil belongs in the company of Joyce, Proust, and Kafka." (The New Republic) Like his contemporary and rival Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil boldly explored the dark, irrational undercurrents of humanity. The Confusions of Young Törless, published in 1906 while he was a student, uncovers the bullying, snobbery, and vicious homoerotic violence at an elite boys academy. Unsparingly honest in its depiction of the author's tangled feelings about his mother, other women, and male bonding, it also vividly illustrates the crisis of a whole society, where the breakdown of traditional values and the cult of pitiless masculine strength were soon to lead to the cataclysm of the First World War and the rise of fascism. A century later, Musil's first novel still retains its shocking, prophetic power.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A pleasant surprise: beauty and friendship in modern times.
As the specialized critics have established this short novel was a preparation for Musil's tour de force "The Man without qualities", in spite of that Musil had written a masterpiece of deutsch literature of the XXth century.
The story of the young student Torless penetrates in the deepness of human nature, the lad's philosophical dissertations about math made the reader understand the limits of rational thinking and his refined sensibility toward beauty and friendship made us remembered ... Read More
Rating: - An Austrian "Lord of the Flies"
"The Confusions of Young Torless" reminds me of William Golding's "Lord of the Flies". Though I sometimes sympathize with "Young Thorless", I like him much less than Stephen Dedalus of "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce or Holden Caulfield of "Catcher in the Rye"by J.D. Salinger. Though I remember very little about it, there could be an affinity with John Knowles "A Separate Peace". I do remember an atmosphere of violent cruelty and adolescent cowardice which binds "Torless" to both ... Read More
Rating:  - intellectual exploration of latent sadomasochism
I first read this book over 10 years ago, when I came across it by chance (bookshop browsing). Since then I have read it every few years and am impressed every time. This book is about as high-brow as it gets, but it is not pretentious or gratuitously intellectual. Rather, it is an authentic analysis of a sadomasochistic mind-set, mysticism, and the sense of not-belongingness/social alienation. The latter aspects of this book are compellingly dealt with but what sets this book apart is that the psychology ... Read More
Rating: - A glimpse into adolescent angst, Viennese style
Robert Musil is best-known for a very long novel (A Man Without Qualities) that few people have read. Young Törless is his first novel, as concise as it is memorable. Rather than a sprawling overview of the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire, this chilling little novel focuses on the insecurities and corruptions of young man in a boarding school. Whether you take an interest in it for the metaphors of international power struggles (no coincidence that the "feminine," exploited boy is Italian), the sadistically ... Read More
Rating:  - A Reviewer In Search Of An Umlaut
Young Torless was one of the orange Penguins I picked up on holiday. I must confess that I had not heard of the author, Robert Musil, but have since discovered that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize, Thomas Mann exclusively recommended his novel sequence The Man Without Qualities and this latter work is considered by some to be on a par with Joyce and Proust. The gaps in my knowledge are legion.
Written in 1909, this semi-autobiographical debut novel takes place at a military academy for young men, ... Read More
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