It is a novel about a different kind of people waiting for Godot. The novel asserts that a civilization without small talk is possible. More defines a man than what he ate for lunch.
Humans turn to big questions, not featured in small talk, out of craving for simple answers. Non-existence of simple answers is easier to verify in small questions than big ones. Humans turn to big questions also in order to explain and thus predict environment. Simple answers are easy to live by and to remember.
Big questions do not feature in a small talk, defined as an exchange in which a speaker expects his interlocutor's response. Small talk about big questions is confined to conversations of co-religionists or patriots. No new ideas emerge from such conversations.
In the novel, individuals take time off (of the time-off, for some) in order to discover a simple idea that would give purpose to their nation and, by extension---they hope---to them. The pursuit can be counteproductive. No cell in a flower is charged with improving the functioning of the entire plant. Nonetheless, the plant evolves, often for the better. Still, the pursuit of a big idea can be fruitful, as it accelerates the mutation of ideas, as long as no mutated idea is malicious enough to annihilate the society.
Literally and by example, the novel warns one against getting lost in details. Beauty is secured by pruning the inessential and the ugly. The illusion of causation (and hence of control) is gained by linearly arranging the events and by living them linearly, with only the briefest sojourns in the past or future. That is, life must be lived as a novel. A novel, a product of an inevitably systematizing mind, delivers linearity and thus gratifies.
Robert Musil's characters grope for a structured thought. The strongest overcome the arresting urge to drown themselves in contemplating the lofty, a symptom of perfectionism. Instead, they summon (or profess) the courage to proceed with the essential mundane.
In the novel, ladies worship the protagonist, Ulrich. They are attracted to him by his detachment and by the author's wistful thinking.