The Man Without Qualities and you, plus ill-matched book covers

"Ulrich retorted:`A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he's stupid ... in literature, talents not much above average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses.'"

Whom, authors or otherwise, does that remind you of?

"Ulrich, thinking he was the first to have realized that the man under the window was one of those sick people who through the abnormality of their sex lives attract the lively curiosity of the sexually normal..."

What scandals or crime novels does that remind you of? And how many schillings would you care to bet that Musil smiled when he wrote that passage?

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Odd Musil cover note: One edition of The Man Without Qualities bears reproductions of paintings by the Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele — odd because the novel as well as commentaries to Musil's essays make it clear that Musil was wary at best of the Expressionists' tempestuous emotions. What covers have you thought particularly ill-matched to their books?

© Peter Rozovsky 2013