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. But, having said all this, is there any hope in Houellebecq’s oeuvre? This is most concretely seen in the strong internal loyalties of Ara­bic, African, and Turkish immigrants who follow Islam, which Houellebecq describes in Soumission. 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. Francios, the novel's main character, is a scholar of the nineteenth-century French writer J.K. Huysman. 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. Al­though Houellebecq, a poet more than a philosopher, shies away from laying out a detailed political manifesto, he tells us on every page that we need to rediscover a territorial, social, and historical connection with others around us, a connection which transcends individual choice, momentary whims, and instrumental interests. I think Houellebecq has a very powerful critique, it s a very powerfully felt critique. 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. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. So yes, the modern world brought liberation. Especially after the Zen workshops. "Houellebecq's deadpan description of a France colonized by American products and ideas is the background to what will be Michel's great notion. ( Log Out /  I know what the veterans of ’68 are like when they hit forty. So the paradox is this: the freedom we desire eventually makes us unfree and unhappy, while the constraints that we reject eventually make us happy and free. Subsequently, he experiences up close how rural life is collapsing as a consequence of free trade and unfair competition from Third World countries. 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. 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. But how has this really been working out for them? 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. Sérotonine, too, ends in a quasi-religious meditation. But, given the aston­ishing rise of populists and nationalists in Europe and beyond, the question cannot be avoided. The “liber­ated” status of women is usually celebrated as one of the great triumphs of late-liberal society. Nowadays (definitely in Belgium) there is a lot of debate concerning the immigration of people from Muslim countries. Michel Houellebecq’s tragic humanism. | Sign In with Blink, Scare Tactics: Michel Houellebecq Defends His Controversial New Book. Serotonin: A Novel by michel houellebecq farrar, straus and giroux, 320 pages, $27. What hap­pens when they hit thirty? 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. Individualism has reached its final stage and cannot develop any further. Do I really need to offer up my life for these whingers? Houellebecq's critique of modern man's isolation from his fellows is certainly accurate. 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. And everything melts away into an all-encompassing void. Paul Collier, Times Literary Supplement But this in itself is not enough. 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. Rudderless. 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. How encouraging to finally read a modern writer who takes the problem of sex seriously! So, while the Islam is presented in a bad daylight, the true critique is on our society and our intellectuals as a whole. 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. 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. So, while the Islam is presented in a bad daylight, the true critique is on our society and our intellectuals as a whole. . . 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. Houellebecq does not really reach a conclusion. Houellebecq masterfully gives critique both to the Islam and to the hypocrisy of the intellectual elite, who don’t really follow through in their beliefs when it isn’t profitable for them to follow them. A crisis of atomization. Houellebecq est un peu la voix de la mauvaise conscience, le poil à gratter qui fait tomber les idées reçues. 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. No mercy, no comfort: the project of our civilization has come to an end. . Or is it the writer who is speaking here, presenting his oeuvre as an attempt to offer salvation? When he finds out that his current Japanese girlfriend has been going to orgies behind his back, where she has serviced not only groups of other men but even three dogs (a pit bull, a boxer, and a terrier, as he specifies rather precisely), he resolves to disappear without a trace. 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. James Buchan finds that Platform, Michel Houellebecq's controversial critique of European culture, doesn't quite add up James Buchan Fri 6 Sep 2002 19.57 EDT … We are profoundly incapable of defining ourselves as individuals (although we think we can). Michel Houellebecq was born in 1958 in La Reunion. But whatever the case, it is not easy to see how we could possibly constrain the forces that we have unleashed. Interview met Michel Houellebecq’, in: NRC Handelsblad, (September 23, 2005) 27. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. So far, a typical French novel. Sexe et dépression en sont les deux pôles principaux. This frustration is expressed directly by the character Christiane in Les particules élémentaires: Never could stand feminists. The latter is the case for the controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq. His latest novel, Serotonin, was published in an English translation earlier this year, and was promptly analyzed by numerous critics and public intellectuals across the country. Or has it been manufactured? They care a bit too much, but French people? I’m practically one myself. Other negative impacts would be instated for women. Deeply depressed by his romantic and professional failures, the aging hedonist and agricultural engineer Florent-Claude Labrouste feels he is “dying of sadness.” . Women wouldn’t be allowed in schools anymore; only men would be allowed to go to university. 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. Then, via desperate consumerism and sexual hedonism, to a futile, feeble cry for help into the cosmos. 6 “Les mutations métaphysiques—c’est-à-dire les transformations radicales et globales de la vision du monde adoptée par le plus grand nombre—sont rares dans l’histoire de l’humanité. 91–110.De Mul, J., Destiny Domesticated. It’s a book that’s quite topical and I believe it’ll be this way for some time still. Critiques (455), citations (411), extraits de Soumission de Michel Houellebecq. The final struggle between Godefroy l’Empereur and the Islamists remained undescribed—and in our world, too, the future remains undecided and our vision is often warped by the frame of liberal individualism. 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. Consider the emancipation of women and the feminist ideology that underpins it (a favorite topic in Houellebecq’s work). 5 Quoted from Michel Houellebecq, Atomised, trans. Do you see common ground between you and Michel Houellebecq, with his critique of Western liberal societies, combined with no justification for reactionary … They just don’t give a shit. It is also more subtle than you might expect. Il semblerait que oui.” Houellebecq, Sérotonine (Paris: Flammarion, 2019), 347 (my translation). Flammarion, 2019, 352 pages. by Michel Houellebecq The rise of Christianity might be cited as an example. When did we go astray? 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. We constantly overestimate our own abilities to create a world on our own. 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. Michel Houellebecq: a terrific fictional character. 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. Photograph: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images. His mother was a "sexually liberated" anaesthetist; his father a mountain guide. Does he then sacrifice himself and plummet to the ground in a desperate attempt to save us all? The intellectuals aren’t really fond of this. Houellebecq is concerned primarily with chaos. When Florent-Claude realizes soon after that his sav­ings account is about to run dry, the short religious meditation I quoted earlier concludes the calculations about leaping from his apartment to the ground. 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. The following entry presents an overview of Houellebecq's career through 2003. Lorin Stein (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 139. I feel, rather, that we can make arrangements. always going on about washing dishes and the division of labor; they could never shut up about the dishes. E urope is old, decrepit, and suffering from fatigue, as though conscious that its life is drawing to a close. Oh, sometimes they’d talk about cooking or vacuuming, but their favorite topic was washing dishes. Even if you don’t share his view on the matter, it is definitely worth the read.