A lot to address here and much food for thought.
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Originally Posted by Dr. Drib
Almost forgot: If you want to be wrapped and caressed in language, to 'dream' while reading, I can also recommend this very dense and consuming novel below:
Marguerite Young - Miss Macintosh, My Darling
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Hah! Well I remember that obese paperback. I got about halfway through and didn't abandon it deliberately, but didn't get back to it. I'm done. That is, it's too recent! (Whew!)
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Originally Posted by Dr. Drib
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Broch is close and will go on a longer-term list. His
The Death of Virgil has been on my tbr for a while. It's too short and too new for this challenge, but I'd like to get to that first.
I've read Musil's
The Confusions of Young Törless which I greatly enjoyed; of course that was an early work and short. My only issue with
Man without Qualities is length; it's why I haven't tackled it until now and I think it would be too long in the context of other long, if not as long, books. Someday (I hope).
As for Canetti, I've read his three memoirs and
Crowds and Power and all were stellar. So I have no idea why I've not read
Auto-da-Fé; just never got to it. If I were to choose it, I'd have to sub it for
Magic Mountain and I've had a hankering to reread that for a long time. But, at least it's not so long that I couldn't read it as an "ordinary" choice; it also has potential along with a few others as a backup, if something's not working.
I appreciate these suggestions. Mitteleuropa in the century from the 1848 revolutions through the end of WWII is of particular interest to me. Among the authors I've read in the past few years are Miklós Bánffy, Robert Walser, Gregor von Rezzori, Joseph Roth, Dezső Kosztolányi. So this was a good nudge to tackle consequential texts of the period.