If Robert Musil Were Alive
James Joyce said that all good stories start with “Once upon a time.”
It doesn’t really matter what a story starts with as long as it ends. That is the idea, to get to the end. If you don’t know how it is going to end then, there you go. Ever building, working, weaving, and nothing standing as a whole ever coming of it, ever. Then, like Robert Musil, dying with an unfinished manuscript, a novel that if Musil was immortal would still be going on, the action extending through two world wars, the cold war, yesterday, now.
That is something. There is nothing wrong with that, really. It just means you might as well give up on publication. Unless you are the type to post excerpts. Unless you are the type to print excerpts, and your excerpts are good enough to be printed.
Robert Musil was.
Joyce was, and did.