First published in 1936, and considered one of the most groundbreaking and signi
ficant novels written in Catalan, "Waltz" tells the tale of an idle, introspecti
ve, and somewhat oblivious young "man without qualities" as he stumbles through
a milieu of civic upheaval and bourgeois tragedy, waltzing from one prospective
bride to another, never willing to compromise his ideals, and so never quite bec
oming an adult. With one foot in the romanticism of Goethe or Kleist, and anothe
r in the wildly differing takes on the modern novel provided by Aldous Huxley, J
ames Joyce, and Marcel Proust, respectively, "Waltz" is an occasionally absurd c
omedy of indecision and indolence structured in imitation of the dance from whic
h it takes its title.
