Whatever
Translated by Paul Hammond, 1999
The British translator and/or publisher should be beheaded profoundly booed for calling this Whatever when a more loyal translation of its original French title is something amazing like Extension of the Domain of the Struggle. If we otherwise lived in a total utopia, I’d say changing the English translation’s title to something closer to the original would be a major issue in the current election cycle. This one seemed at first like it was written by someone other than the masterful dude who did The Elementary Particles and The Possibility of an Island (see below). I blamed the translator at first, followed by Houellebecq’s youth: intermittently clever but otherwise meh. But then the narrator goes to a club for young singles and things take off—steam gathers, themes condense, the prose pushes ahead and doesn’t just muse about the connection between moving furniture (especially beds) and suicide. What’s cool too is that many of the themes are the same ones he develops in later books, but here he’s a little more flatly vulgar or theoretical, his tone/style shifts (occasionally exuberantly purple and then also a bit more spare/poetic at times too, more regionally French). But then things really rise and end well (nails the landing). Definitely worth reading, and maybe even re-reading, considering it’s 154 not-so-dense pages. Anyway, whatever: I’d like to see a translation by Gavin Bowd or Frank Wynne, someone who’d respect the original title and maybe de-Brit it a bit.
The Elementary Particles
Translated by Frank Wynne, 2001
Damn! Acquired this maybe four or five years before I finally read it (2008). Wished I’d read it long ago. Totally brilliant. Purposefully vicious and perverted to make philosophical points about the unhappy state of humanity. Juxtaposition of many sagging labias and licked cocks (which sadly might turn idiots off) with mucho genetics-related philosophizing (which sadly might turn idiots off). A book about the achievement of utopia, sort of like Huxley’s Brave New World and Island, which the book deals with. Another uber-pessimistic/vile book born of idealism/hope, as with Thomas Bernhard. An entirely compassionate work of art, in its way, in that it’s about ending human suffering and moving beyond desire and death. The succession of science over religion. Big themes. High art. Mostly exposition with suggestions of scenes, few conventionally dramatized via dialogue. Consistently gnarly/rad sentences make it flowing and imaginable and wholly enjoyable. Whole paragraphs (eg, about humanity’s historically unprecedented concern with aging and how suicide is preferable to loss of physical function) I read aloud to a friend. At a bar, had another friend read a hilarious destruction of Brazil’s allure when someone nearby ranted about Brazil’s awesomeness. Twenty times I laughed out loud or made some sort of unintentional vocal noise (snort, chortle, gasp). An exciting book that makes me want write while I read everything this dude’s done and does forevermore hereafter.
Platform
Translated by Frank Wynne, 2003
Read this ten years ago but didn’t note my initial reading impressions. Now, I remember it being pretty easy reading about sex tourism in Thailand undermined by terrorists. A morality lesson, sort of. Loved how everything is going wonderfully for the main couple, the way it never really does in novels, and then you turn the page to a new chapter and the author has totally wrenched their fate all the way in the other direction. Probably complements Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods really well.
Lanzarote
Translated by Frank Wynne, 2004
This is more a short story formatted to seem like a novella, with a few full-color photos of volcanic rock formations. It’s a travelogue that morphs into semi-hot threesome scenes that then transforms into what seems like non-fictional notes for the religious sect from The Possibility of an Island. Reads entirely unlike fiction, but a search for “Azraelian” made me feel like a duped fool. Worth an hour of reading if you’ve read The Possibility of an Island.
H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life
Translated by Dorna Khazeni, 2005
Come for Houellebecq’s essay about Lovecraft (wherein, in 1991, Michel essentially drafts the thematic and stylistic blueprint for his future novels), but stay for the surprisingly awesome Lovecraft tales. (I rarely have nightmares but have since reading these—seriously!)
The Possibility of an Island
Translated by Gavin Bowd, 2007
I feel more warm writerly admiration for this one than flat-out freakin’ readerly love, as with The Elementary Particles . . . Not as funny, sadder, longer, denser, more philosophically thorough, more speculative/post-apocalyptic/scifi-ish, with similar semi-unpretty yet thematically purposeful eroticism and more of a goin’-for-the-gold theological focus.
The Map and the Territory
Translated by Gavin Bowd, 2012
Finished the last thirty wonderfully flowing and surprising pages that end with the total domination of vegetation and then went back to the first lines namedropping Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst and said aloud “Ha, what a great book.” I love how clearly he writes, with such unexpected analysis/insight, exaggerated generalizations asserted as truth (although toned down in this one—not as much potentially politically incorrect stuff in general, and certainly not as much sex as the last two). I purposefully read nothing about this one and only knew it had been called an art world thriller—which is half right. It’s not a thriller and it’s not so much about the art world as it is about how the nature of human industry relates to nature itself? A must for fans and a good introduction, too. No one else does genre-mashup semi-misanthropic nihilistic philosophy quite like him, although this did at times seem like a much better rendition of what BEE did in Lunar Park, genre-y literary fiction that includes the author as a character? But this novel doesn’t devolve into spare plot mechanics—the detective crimey bits are just as robust and typically swervy and “written” as the stuff that seems more literary. A nod, I think, to Bolaño at one point but transposed to Thailand and the murders dropped from 300 to 30. Overall, an enjoyable weekend plus a few other sittings reading this. A softer, gentler (even accounting for the vicious murder and assorted body parts here and there), more mature Houellebecq, with his sharp, authentically Franch eye now a little more on the end of life (and the end of authentic/traditional French culture), although in this he spends 30 pages early on delivering the main character’s backstory, something I don’t remember in his other books, wherein characters are presented without much authorial worry re: their histories, like in genre books. Amazingly, there’s even a strong-willed successful female character in this one who’s not treated as a sex object! This book will probably be treated as news about contemporary (French and international commerce) culture that’ll stay news in the future, or maybe like the old photos Jed films it’ll fade with exposure to time and the elements, like Balzac before him? Houellebecq suggests that all he wants to do is account for what he sees, aspiring to the patient vision of plants. What he sees he presents as an inexact map of the thickety terrain of life, where all things change, except for ever-changing nature and the criminal motivations of sex and greed. Something like that. Anyway, a real good book. Might go back and read The Elementary Particles.
Submission
Translated by Lorin Stein, 2015
Like “The Phantom Menace” but without Jar-Jar Binks to blame. Too much political talk, not enough characterization or story or interest. The worst WELL-beck since Whatever (since Lanzarote, really). Undercooked extension of the conflict between Islam and intellectual liberalism/feminism. If read super-generously, all the near-futuristic politicizing induces a state of apathy in the reader that reflects the narrator’s apathy. The occasional sexy scene adds a spark for the reader, same as it does in the narrator’s life. I read Huysman’s Against Nature a few years ago and liked it, so I understood the parallel. But still: dull and underdone. Only the occasional page of delicious, provocative, typically Houllebecqian ideation.
Looks like I haven’t read Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World, 2011, and no new novels have come out in French recently, although I’m interested in his recent Schopenhauer essay/memoir should it ever come out in English (or should I ever learn French).
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To support the kind publishers who have taken a chance on my writing, please acquire a copy of Neutral Evil ))) and/or JRZDVLZ. Or my translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador. Or Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters From the Eyeshot Outbox directly from the publisher. Or even a copy of The Shimmering Go-Between directly from me (the publisher is kaput).