Getting what we want does not make us happy; it actually makes us unhappy. Thierry Baudet is a member of the Dutch Parliament and founder of the party Forum for Democracy. Lovecraft his first novel, and though it was published in 1991, four years before Whatever , it’s a work of nonfiction. . Alex Clark. Yet, it is also critique of the intellectual world. If you allow yourself a brief moment to view the world from Houellebecq’s perspective, his philosophy is validated all around us. Encensé avec une générosité excessive par l'establishment de la critique, bénéficiant d'une promotion balayant toutes les autres sorties du janvier, « Sérotonine » confirme que depuis « Soumission », Houellebecq est entré en hibernation, tel un ours suçant sa patte. But it doesn’t last. And in a famous 2015 interview in the Paris Review, Houellebecq in fact commented: “I accelerate history, I condense an evolution that is, in my opinion, realistic.” He added: “The Koran turns out to be much better than I thought. Quitting his job, he leaves their joint apartment without a word and decides to carry on anony­m­ously for as long as his savings will allow. Houellebecq is a one-off and his worldview is bracingly unwoke. It’s a book that’s quite topical and I believe it’ll be this way for some time still. Michel Houellebecq’s satirical novel about France becoming an Islamic state is actually a clever, often very funny read. The rise of Christianity might be cited as an example. For a short while he seems to recover his lust for life. They are both liberation movements; they both want the complete emancipation of the indi­vidual. As things stand today, this second scenario clearly represents the most likely future for Europe. | Sign In with Blink, Scare Tactics: Michel Houellebecq Defends His Controversial New Book. by Michel Houellebecq Europeans are having fewer children, burdened by shame, guilt, fear. Television, internet, and pornography have replaced organic social intercourse and physical intimacy. Why, then, has Houellebecq, for his latest book, chosen a pro­tagonist who belongs to the nihilistic 1990s rather than the asser­tive 2010s? Or do we still—despite the Herculean challenge of overcoming modern individualism—have the option of revitalizing our civilization? The “metaphysical mutation” that prescribes maximum individual pleasure and materialistic gain reached its logical conclusion, Houelle­becq explains, in the liberal vision of mankind found in Al­dous Huxley’s Brave New World. The following entry presents an overview of Houellebecq's career through 2003. Est-ce qu’il faut vraiment, en supplément, que je donne ma vie pour ces minables? Frank Wynne (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), 121–22. Any reader, in my view, will be hard-pressed to deny that Houelle­becq has identified—in passages such as this one—a crisis we all recognize. Michel Houellebecq (prononcer [wɛlˈbɛk]), né Michel Thomas le 26 février 1956 à Saint-Pierre (La Réunion), est un écrivain, poète et essayiste français. Elle possédait la suzeraineté, elle possédait la puissance, mais peu à peu je sentais que je perdais le contact, qu’elle s’éloignait dans l’espace et dans les siècles tandis que je me tassais sur mon banc, ratatiné, restreint. Flammarion, 2019, 352 pages. He was brought up in … Religion is not something people are able to critique easily. Michel Houellebecq: a terrific fictional character. Or is it the writer who is speaking here, presenting his oeuvre as an attempt to offer salvation? 4 “La Vierge attendait dans l’ombre, calme et immarcescible. Ce quil fait en sinstallant dans un hôtel Mercure (où lon peut encore fumer) à la porte dItalie, après avoir quitté sa compagne du moment, Yuzu, une japonaise qui copule, entre autres, avec des chiens, c… Étude des poésies de Michel Houellebecq Delphine Grass: Michel Houellebecq et les préromantiques allemands : vers une lecture poétique du roman houellebecquien Joaquim Lemasson: Une poésie prosaïque Per Buvik: Inauthenticité et ironie. We are profoundly incapable of defining ourselves as individuals (although we think we can). While the pro­tagonist deliberates over whether or not to jump from his apartment (and after he has just worked out the speed and duration of the fall in a dry, almost surreal calculation), suddenly there is this: Actually, God does care about us, he thinks about us all the time, and he guides us, sometimes quite precisely. Now this fundamental point which Houellebecq makes time and again deserves further reflection, because it challenges the very fun­damentals of both the contemporary “Left” and the “Right.” It challenges modern anthropology as such. The French edition of the book was published on 7 January 2015 by Flammarion, with German (Unterwerfung) and Italian (Sottomissione) translations also published in January. Today, even new life (in the womb) may be extinguished to avoid disturbing the individual’s freedom. La critique de Sérotonine, le dernier roman de Michel Houellebecq, par Lettres it be, c'est par ici ! They care a bit too much, but French people? He is the author of The Significance of Borders (Brill, 2012). Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission—recently translated into English—depicts a dystopian near future in which France undergoes Islamization. This desperate moralism opens the doors to massive num­bers of immigrants, undermines real political communities, and makes distinctive national and civilizational aspirations impossible. Simplifions lhistoire: Florent-Claude Labrouste est un agronome dans la quarantaine qui décide de se soustraire à la vie sociale. . The Times [Houellebecq’s] latest, and perhaps most devastating, critique of the disastrous swerve in Western culture. Then, via desperate consumerism and sexual hedonism, to a futile, feeble cry for help into the cosmos. . To have a position of power would mean to convert to the Islam. have outed critique on Christianity and on the Islam. So yes, the modern world brought liberation. For without the ability to define ourselves in an unbreakable connection with our surroundings, there is nothing for us to derive meaning from and we end up depressed. Michel Houellebecq (prononcer [wɛlˈbɛk]), né Michel Thomas le 26 février 1956 à Saint-Pierre (La Réunion), est un écrivain, poète et essayiste français. Do I really need to offer up my life for these whingers? In most of his books, Houellebecq refers to some form of identitarian movement, of nationalists and populists, or, as in Séroto­nine, a popular uprising à la today’s gilets jaunes. Sérotonine But, given the aston­ishing rise of populists and nationalists in Europe and beyond, the question cannot be avoided. However, once you've diagnosed the pathology you can't just surrender to it. ( Log Out /  When learning about this all the male intellectuals decide that the Islam isn’t all that bad and become a Muslim. It echoes, in certain ways, Marxist Verelendungstheorie: as technological inno­vations have made jobs boring and interchangeable, and as free trade has destroyed traditional farm life and honest labor, we now pass through life as atomized wage slaves in the service of incomprehensible, unfathomable government organizations and overwhelmingly powerful multinational corporations. They would be allowed to have multiple wives. It is left to the reader to decide. 5 Quoted from Michel Houellebecq, Atomised, trans. Or perhaps he finds himself as an author unable to rid himself of that sense of defeat which characterizes his generation (Houellebecq was born in 1956—the truly lost generation). For a brief moment, just before the end of Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Sérotonine, a ray of hope seems to galvanize its protagonist. Metaphysical mutations—that is to say radical, global transfor­mations in the values to which the majority subscribe—are rare in the history of humanity. Submission (French: Soumission) is a novel by French writer Michel Houellebecq. 2 “Dieu s’occupe de nous en réalité, il pense à nous à chaque instant, et il nous donne des directives parfois très précises. In this age of instant hookups and online pornography, renewed chastity seems very far off. The book instantly became a bestseller in France, Germany and Italy. I feel, rather, that we can make arrangements. Then, religion: Houellebecq argues that we will always conceive of ourselves in terms of a metaphysical purpose. Michel Houellebecq, original name Michel Thomas, (born February 26, 1956 or 1958, Réunion, France), French writer, satirist, and provocateur whose work exposes his sometimes darkly humorous, often offensive, and thoroughly misanthropic view of humanity and the world.He was one of the best-known, if not always best-loved, French novelists of the early 21st century. . Karl Ove Knausgaard reviews Michel Houellebecq’s new novel, which imagines France as a Muslim state in 2022. Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish a translation by Shaun Whiteside in September 2019. . No mercy, no comfort: the project of our civilization has come to an end. Ces élans d’amour qui affluent dans nos poitrines jusqu’à nous couper le souffle, ces illuminations, ces extases, inexplicables si l’on considère notre nature biologique, notre statut de simples primates, sont des signes extrêmement clairs. Again, all this may be true, or partly true: the comforting convic­tion that we are not alone, the idea that we are part of a greater plan and that a fatherly figure is watching over us, may well be necessary to accept the existential shortcomings of ourselves and those around us. We are now at the point where we must begin to think about what comes after—and this will necessarily be some form of tra­ditionalism. If you sense overtones of George Orwell here, be advised, it smacks of Orwellian critique – Houellebecq exchanges the political dogma of “Big Brother” for the omnipresent religious dogma in the neohumans, the “Supreme Sister”. Michel Houellebecq is the ageing enfant terrible of French literature. The new Michel Houellebecq novel, Serotonin, is an exhausted and exhausting book. We fly towards the light like moths; we are constantly drawn by its maddening attraction—and yet we are never fulfilled by the thing we pursue. Because individualism makes our societies so weak (re­sulting, as we have seen, in an unwillingness to defend our civilization, to resist mass immigration, and even to reproduce, among other things), our society shall either regress and regenerate, or it will be replaced. In Plateforme, the limitless supply of sex in Thailand’s coastal resorts leaves the author’s subjects on a temporary high. Au bout d’une demi-heure je me relevai, définitivement déserté par l’Esprit, réduit à mon corps endommagé, périssable, et je redescendis tristement les marches en direction du parking.” Quoted from Michel Houellebecq, Submission, trans. Work and children then often limit the time available for the maintenance of a committed relationship, and rare are the lovers that both work full hours, rear children, and invest sufficiently in each other for the marriage to remain healthy over time. Tiré chez Flammarion à 320 000 exemplaires, c'est la sensation de la rentrée littéraire. "Houellebecq's deadpan description of a France colonized by American products and ideas is the background to what will be Michel's great notion. This frustration is expressed directly by the character Christiane in Les particules élémentaires: Never could stand feminists. To start with sex, in Extension du domaine de la lutte Houelle­becq writes: From the amorous point of view, Véronique belonged, as we all do, to a sacrificed generation. ( Log Out /  Dès lors qu’une mutation métaphysique s’est produite, elle se développe sans rencontrer de résistance jusqu’à ses conséquences ultimes.” Quoted from Houellebecq, Atomised, 4. The extreme right party and the Muslim party. Even if you don’t share his view on the matter, it is definitely worth the read. And Houellebecq proposes that this new trinity falls short—that the very idea that we should be trying to pursue individual happiness is itself flawed. Les idées incongrues voisinent ici avec les longues réflexions muries. Deeply depressed by his romantic and professional failures, the aging hedonist and agricultural engineer Florent-Claude Labrouste feels he is “dying of sadness.” 29 1 Comments Print Email Kindle. This is the tragedy that has befallen us. As we once worshipped the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, we today venerate liberty, equality, and fraternity. Nowadays (definitely in Belgium) there is a lot of debate concerning the immigration of people from Muslim countries. Another outcome is constant con­flict, constant competition—and in the end, fighting, divorce, and social isolation—and a new generation of boys and girls growing up in such disfigured settings. In a way his vision reminds me of something my PhD supervisor, the British philosopher Roger Scruton, once (jokingly) told me, that “the discovery of fossil fuels is the greatest tragedy in the history of man.” Whatever he really meant by that (he certainly wasn’t referring to that other modern heresy, the quasi-religion of “climate change”), he seemed to suggest that we have unleashed forces which we are unable to control. In all these movements, Houellebecq sees (correctly, in my view) an attempt to preserve traditional European culture or indeed to reestablish it: a world in which the family is once again at the center, in which nations are restored, maybe even a form of Christianity is reinstated. It’s quite straight to the point and doesn’t leave much room for multiple narratives. Sexe et dépression en sont les deux pôles principaux. Already subscribed? Existential connections have become almost impossible since few are genuinely prepared to sacrifice short-term pleasure for the commitment required to estab­lish a deep mutual connection. It contains a scathing critique of the European Union and imagines farmers blocking roadways … And both base their vision of society on the (unfounded but supposedly “self-evident”) principle that every individual enjoys certain “inalienable rights,” which by definition eclipse all other claims, and to which all other ties, loyalties, and connections must ultimately be subordinated. He questions the sacred trinity of the modern worldview. True, the Islam has some unacceptable laws, but it’s we as a society who are willing to let those unacceptable laws exist as long as we get some profit from it (here: multiple women). It is this fundamental assumption of the modern age—that individual autonomy (be it through free markets or welfarism) leads to happiness—which Michel Houellebecq challenges. Rudderless. ( Log Out /  This is a light read. Oct. 28 2015. So today I understand how Christ felt, his frustration at people’s hardened hearts: they have seen the signs and yet they pay no attention. Sérotonine - Michel Houellebecq ***** There's no question that the major publishing event of the new French literary season is the new book by Michel Houellebecq, the now aging enfant terrible of the French literary establishment. Do you see common ground between you and Michel Houellebecq, with his critique of Western liberal societies, combined with no justification for reactionary … Véronique avait connu trop de discothèques et d’amants; un tel mode de vie appauvrit l’être humain, lui infligeant des dommages parfois graves et toujours irréversibles. The complete review's Review: . Love as a kind of innocence and as a capacity for illusion, as an aptitude for epitomizing the whole of the other sex in a single loved being rarely resists a year of sexual immo­rality, and never two. In La possibilité d’une île (2005), that cry finally brings a new holistic world religion into being, which sublimates desire in an almost Buddhist manner. Sérotonine (Michel Houellebecq) Critique de CCRIDER le 25 mars 2019 (3 votes, moyenne: 3,33 / 5) ... (Florent-Claude étant à l’évidence un avatar de Michel Houellebecq), ne déroge pas aux thèmes habituellement traités par l’auteur. In desperation, the resistance leader commits suicide at a demonstration not unlike today’s gilets jaunes protests. Yet even these delights finally fade amid the loneliness, the isolation, and the pointlessness of it all—and that is why Houelle­becq’s books generally culminate in a kind of religious vision. Where does this liberal view of man, which has ushered in the rapid decline of Western civilization, originate? Photograph: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images. Liberalism and socialism differ when it comes to the most effective way to achieve that objective, but they do not differ in the objective itself. It makes you wonder if he has played out his string as a fiction writer ... Like nearly every Houellebecq novel, Serotonin should be stamped on its spine with a tiny skull and crossbones, like you used to see on bottles of poison, to keep away the devout, the unsuspecting and the pure of heart. http://cinema.arte.tv/fr/magazine/lenlevement-de-michel-houellebecq Michel Houellebecq vit selon des règles précises et immuables. The sun doesn’t rise. Houelle­becq, however, draws upon older intuitions which maintain that the bond which forms through sexual intimacy may reemerge once or twice, but not much more, and that we should therefore be extremely cautious in acquiring amorous experience. Houellebecq actually calls this criticism of H.P. E urope is old, decrepit, and suffering from fatigue, as though conscious that its life is drawing to a close. How encouraging to finally read a modern writer who takes the problem of sex seriously! The “liber­ated” status of women is usually celebrated as one of the great triumphs of late-liberal society. . The glow on the horizon fades—just like in the closing passage of Houellebecq’s first novel, Ex­tension du domaine de la lutte, in which the subject’s hope sim­ilarly vanishes after a delightful, optimistic afternoon in the country: “It will not take place, the sublime fusion,” he reflects, “the goal of life is missed.”1. In Les particules élémentaires (1998), the pursuit of knowledge itself assumes religious proportions that raises mankind to a divine perspective through genetic manipulation. He has to be deliberalized. The latter is the case for the controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq. The latter is the case for the controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq. So they have crying fits. He writes wonderfully. The French edition of the book was published on 7 January 2015 by Flammarion, with German (Unterwerfung) and Italian (Sottomissione) translations also published in January. . 7 Sylvain Bourmeau, “Scare Tactics: Michel Houellebecq Defends His Controversial New Book,” Paris Review, January 2, 2015. . The elections are coming up and two parties are taking the front. I think Houellebecq has a very powerful critique, it s a very powerfully felt critique. 3 “Du point de vue amoureux Véronique appartenait, comme nous tous, à une génération sacrifiée. . All control of life—and of who we are—is lost. Houellebecq does not really reach a conclusion. A crisis of atomization. Sérotonine tells the story of Florent-Claude, who grows up somewhere near Paris, trains as an agriculturalist, finds a job with Mon­santo, and later works in Normandy’s cheese industry before ending up in the French Ministry of Agriculture. It makes you wonder if he has played out his string as a fiction writer ... Like nearly every Houellebecq novel, Serotonin should be stamped on its spine with a tiny skull and crossbones, like you used to see on bottles of poison, to keep away the devout, the unsuspecting and the pure of heart. En réalité, les expériences sexuelles successives accumulées au cours de l’adolescence minent et détruisent rapidement toute possibilité de projection d’ordre sentimental et romanesque.” Quoted from Houellebecq, Whatever, 112. Yet we are also sad, fundamentally uprooted, always wan­dering, never at home, never safe—exiled, in effect, from the garden we still vaguely remember having once inhabited. After half an hour, I got up, fully deserted by the Spirit, reduced to my damaged, perishable body, and I sadly descended the stairs that led to the car park.4. ( Log Out /  E ver the deadpan comedian, Michel Houellebecq … They usually ended up ditching their boyfriends for a quick fuck with some macho Latin idiot. The feminists will not be able to, if we’re being completely honest. If that is true, we must wait not just for his next book, but for the next generation of authors to pick up the challenge and run with it a little further: and to help us express, and even revive, the Western will to live. Il est de bon ton de critiquer le dernier Houellebecq. Sign In With Your AAJ Account Having languished for years without a sense of purpose, Florent-Claude resolves to end his reliance on antidepressants. Perhaps the protagonist remains lying on the sofa in his apartment, crushed, unable even to gather the strength to walk to the open balcony door and hop over the railing? But this in itself is not enough. Take, for example, the protagonist of Soumission, who tries with all his might to convert to Christianity in the legendary cliffside city of Rocamadour: The Virgin waited in the shadows, calm and timeless. Constantly enticed by the promise of relief, which in the end never really re­lieves, we keep hopelessly searching for the thing that “truly” makes us, as “individuals,” “be ourselves.” In Houellebecq’s view, the very philosophical concept of “the individual self” is wrong. In this sense, Sérotonine is typical of Houellebecq’s oeuvre. Le nouveau roman de Michel Houellebecq, "Sérotonine", vient de sortir. Michel Houellebecq is perhaps the single most successful and controversial of all contemporary novelists writing in French. C'est dans ce contexte politico-historique orageux que Michel Houellebecq propulse le narrateur de Soumission: un universitaire quadragénaire, spécialiste de Huysmans et des écrivains décadents de la fin du XIXe siècle, par ailleurs personnage houellebecquien par excellence, solitaire, détaché, parfaitement indisposé par son époque – ses élites politiques et intellectuelles, ses idéaux progressistes et ses réflexes bien-pensants, ses mœurs mercantiles – et dont les exécrations, prononcées sans colère, nour… F or a brief moment, just before the end of Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Sérotonine, a ray of hope seems to galvanize its protagonist.For a short while he seems to recover his lust for life. Paru en 2009, aux éditions Flammarion, Interventions 2 n’avait pas manqué de faire réagir la critique. Michel Houellebecq enflamme la rentrée. So, while the Islam is presented in a bad daylight, the true critique is on our society and our intellectuals as a whole. LE PLUS. Unable to chart a course for ourselves, we are floating around in an empty sea. Listen to Michel Houellebecq, enfant terrible of French literature The author is a friend of many of French society's movers and shakers, having met … French novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and critic. It has started to consume itself. Francios, the novel's main character, is a scholar of the nineteenth-century French writer J.K. Huysman. I'm a Philosophy student in Belgium, trying to talk and write about ideas of all kinds of sorts. The Elementary Particles was and continues to be a cause célèbre in France. All of Michel Houellebecq's usual concerns and areas of interest, that is: the protagonist fed up with and disappointed by contemporary civilisation, the exotic foreign locale, the nutty cult, contemporary tourist-culture, cloning and other age-defying attempts, the sex. We constantly overestimate our own abilities to create a world on our own. Those who believe that the heavens above us are devoid of a divine presence will invar­iably meet their existential needs in other ways: first with the super­ficial pleasure of a libertine lifestyle, and, in due course, with barely secularized heresies—such as naïve humanitarianism and one-worldism. Indeed, apart from implying the indispensability of a strong national state, Houellebecq indicates that two much more fundamental challenges must be overcome: our sexual and spiritual liberation. His new book imagines a France ruled by Islamists and he has been under 24-hour police protection since the Charlie Hebdo attack. Introduction Tomasz Swoboda: Flânerie poétique de Michel Houellebecq Marie Gil: La métaphore « impossible ». Essays and criticism on Michel Houellebecq - Critical Essays. . Par exemple, on peut citer l’apparition du christianisme. They feel the presence of the Angel or the flower blossoming within but then the work­shop’s over and they’re still ugly, aging and alone. It is no wonder that many critique Christianity instead when they want to disprove God, the same arguments apply in great lines to the Islam as well. Michel Houellebecq is a famous French novelist, a student of Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy, and a controversial prophet of pessimism. L'écrivain publie le 7 janvier "Soumission", roman dans lequel il imagine une France dirigé par un parti islamiste. Houellebecq has become a global publishing phenomenon: his books have been translated worldwide, three film adaptations of his work have been produced, and the author has been the subject of million-euro publishing deals and of successive media scandals in France. H.P. This is most concretely seen in the strong internal loyalties of Ara­bic, African, and Turkish immigrants who follow Islam, which Houellebecq describes in Soumission. 91–110.De Mul, J., Destiny Domesticated. This naturally implies a powerful nation-state that protects the social fabric, along with a high degree of skepticism towards immigration and free trade. Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel acquired an air of urgency when its publication in France, at the beginning of this year, coincided with the emergence of the anti-metropolitan agitators known as les gilets jaunes. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. In this novel we follow a university professor from Paris, who specializes in the work of Joris-Karl Huysmans. Over time, all such institutions that the individual requires to fully actualize a meaningful existence—such as a family and a connection to generations past and future, a nation, a tradition, perhaps a church—will weaken and eventually disappear. The remedy for this collapse of the modern promise is clear. In Les particules élémentaires, probably his most theoretical book, Houellebecq attempts to formulate the explanation for today’s specious anthropology. Once a metaphysical mutation has arisen, it tends to move inexorably toward its logical conclusion.6. REVIEW ESSAY Serotonin: A Novel by michel houellebecq farrar, straus and giroux, 320 pages, $27. Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, Vol. Then they start making jam from Marie Claire recipe cards. At its best, it s like a kind of scorched-earth, and that s where the Anselm Kiefer comparison came in, the sort of ravaged canvases which just represent the terrible disruption that … have outed critique on Christianity and on the Islam. Most of the Christian can tolerate criticism and jokes nowadays, but for Muslim countries this is not the case. Submission (French: Soumission) is a novel by French writer Michel Houellebecq.