Michel Houellebecq
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Michel Houellebecq Explains Himself February 26, 2025
In his debut novel Whatever, Michel Houellebecq wrote that “the novel form is not conceived for depicting indifference or nothingness.” And yet, the 1994 bildungsroman—which featured an unnamed, vividly sullen, and suicidal narrator—inspired an entir...
The Matrix or Lord of the Rings. Choose Wisely. January 30, 2025
Is life worth living? Are the forms of Western life conducive to happiness? These questions are best asked in the form of a novel, and raising such questions is Michel Houellebecq’s strength. Annihilation, published in French in 2022 and translated i...
Malaise at the Monoprix November 26, 2024
Michel Houellebecq’s characters spend a lot of time in supermarkets. In the opening pages of The Elementary Particles, the depressed main character scarfs down a prepackaged fillet of monkfish, sold under the “gourmet” line of the French supermarket ...
Was Houellebecq Right? November 13, 2024
The date for the publication of Michel Houellebecq’s sixth novel was 7 January 2015. The book’s title was Soumission (Submission), and rarely had pre-publication reviews for a book been so vitriolic. The French literary scene loathed the novel, which...
Houellebecq’s Last Warning November 01, 2024
It has become a bit of a cliché to point out that Michel Houellebecq is something of a prophet. The 68-year-old French writer’s debut novel Whatever (1994) gave us Raphael Tisserand – a 28-year-old virgin who considers murdering a couple on a beach o...
Blown Away October 28, 2024
I gave up reading American literary fiction when its authors gave up writing it. The novel was born with its subject, the bourgeois individual. When it became uncool to be bourgeois and individual, literary novelists abandoned realism (the means of p...
Has Houellebecq Found a Happy Ending? October 14, 2024
In a 2010 interview with The Paris Review, Michel Houellebecq explained that he was not a “reactionary,” since he believes it is impossible to resist social change. “You can only observe and describe,” Houellebecq said. “I’ve always liked Balzac’s ve...
The Poet October 09, 2024
I've had my galley of Michel Houellebecq's Annihilation for at least four months now; I've been able to stare at the tentative publication date of 10-8-24, thinking about when I'm going to get around to writing this review.There's something in Houell...
The Faith of Michel Houellebecq October 09, 2024
For the miserable loners who populate Michel Houellebecq’s novels, there is no refuge from the modern world’s awfulness—“no Israel,” as one of them says. Over three decades, the French novelist has tallied the grim costs of “l’extension du domaine de...
France’s Most Controversial Novelist October 09, 2024
Michel Houellebecq — arguably the most important French writer of the past quarter-century — was perched on the seat of his chair like a bird. We were sitting in his dim Paris apartment in August, a spectacularly beautiful day visible through his cur...
Michel Houellebecq Is Literature’s Lucifer September 26, 2024
According to folklore, somewhere in the Southern Carpathians there’s a university called Scholomance that’s run by the devil. Students are taught how to conjure spells, command the weather and ride dragons. What, though, might be on the devil’s curri...
Michel Houellebecq’s Material Hell September 18, 2024
In a text first published in 1991 and translated into English as “To Stay Alive”, Michel Houellebecq offered self-help advice to aspiring writers. Some of it was general: “Develop in yourself a profound resentment toward life… Ruin your life, but not...
Lunch With Michel Houellebecq September 16, 2024
I meet Michel Houellebecq at Maison Péret, a busy brasserie serving regional French cuisine in Paris’s 14th arrondissement. He’s bang on time for lunch — which is to say he arrives at 6pm. “I can’t have a meal without drinking wine,” he had explained...
Review: 'Annihilation' by Michel Houellebecq September 16, 2024
French novelist Michel Houellebecq’s last novel, 2019’s Serotonin, practically dared the reader to abandon it. Bitter, bigoted narrator Florent-Claude Labrouste sprayed venom in all directions, but reserved the worst for his near-silent, spectacularl...
Houellebecq: Brexit, Sex Tapes and My Tears for France September 16, 2024
So here is Michel Houellebecq. The author of eight novels, several volumes of poetry and innumerable controversies stumbles out of the first day of autumn rain in Paris towards this down-at-heel brasserie. He looks rather dazed....
The Battle for Hope March 26, 2024
Michel Houellebecq’s infamous novel Submission features Francois, a middle-aged literary scholar who functions as a postmodern rendering of Durtal, the main character of J.K. Huysmans’s turn-of-the-century decadent novels. Francois’s academic and per...
France’s Philosopher King January 17, 2024
Aperson’s literary talents do not seem to bear any direct relation to their human qualities. More precisely, the value of a work, its depth as well as its beauty, cannot be judged by the life of the person who wrote it — even when the work has obviou...
