The librarian in Robert Musil's “The Man Without Qualities” explains that reading any particular book distracts from what is truly important: the relationship between all books.

Robert Musil的“没有性格的人”中描述的图书管理员说，读任何一种特定的书都会割裂与真正重要的东西的联系：所有书籍之间的联系。

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The librarian in Robert Musil's "the Man Without Qualities" explains that reading any particular book distracts from what is truly important: the relationship between all books.

在罗伯特·穆西尔(Robert Musil)的《无德之人》(The Man Without Qualities)中有一位图书馆员，他说，人们光读某一本书，就会忽视真正重要的东西——书与书之间的联系。

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"Dead Souls, " meanwhile, is among that small number of uncompleted masterpieces that includes Tchaikovsky's Unfinished Symphony, and Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities, " but with the important qualification that Nikolai Gogol's great work is all the better for remaining unfinished.

WSJ: Surveying the Surging Immensity of Life | Dead Souls | Nikolai Gogol | By Joseph Epstein