Kierkegaard writes in “Diary of a Seducer”: “You have had the audacity to deceive a person in such a way that you have become everything to me, so that I would rejoice solely in being your slave. Yours I am, yours, yours, your curse, Cordelia.” The seducer in this book struck me as a Houellebecqian character but without the vulgarity.
The vulgarity of course is of the essence in Houellebecq’s work. You cannot comment on vulgarity without becoming slightly vulgar yourself.
The absence of vulgarity in “Diary of a Seducer” might explain why this book, a laudable book by all means, is not a novel.