On satire – Wyatt Mason in NYT:

‘Fairy tales and Michel Houellebecq might not seem a natural fit. Opinions of Houellebecq and his work have always been — divided would be a hilarious understatement — vehemently opposed. Things he has been called with regularity: controversial, provocative, nihilistic, misogynistic, racist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, disgusting, foul, a sentimentalist, self-promoting. Things he has also been called: unprecedented, essential, daring, sensitive, inspired, mischievous, brilliant. When he publishes a book in France, or when he hasn’t in some time, or when one of his books has been adapted for film or television, or when he has directed an adaptation of one of his books, or when he has a part in a film, the coverage continues. Which is to say: One way or another, coverage of Houellebecq is total.’

(…)

‘While doing publicity for “Platform,” Houellebecq described monotheistic religions as stupid — Christianity, Judaism, Islam — adding that, of all the stupid religions, Islam was stupidest. He was sued in France for hate speech and charged with inciting racial hatred. At a hearing, he defended his statements, in part, by pointing out that the holy texts of these religions don’t preach peace or love or tolerance but hate. He was ultimately acquitted, the judges ruling that expressing hatred toward Islam did not amount to doing so toward Muslims.’

(…)

‘“Submission” is a complicated book that can be read as Swiftian satire: The cure for Ireland’s poverty is to eat its children; the cure for social and political rot in France is to embrace Islam. It is both the embodiment of Western fears of Eurabia and a dig at them: Houellebecq later said he was, absolutely, playing on the growing fear of Islam in France and, as if to acknowledge the slipperiness of his own textual provocations, that he was “probably” an Islamophobe himself.’

(…)

‘But the apartment was only a pied-à-terre. He lived for eight years in Chinatown, where, he told me, he liked being the only white man. He chose the new place for its proximity to the Gare Montparnasse, where he could most easily board a train — after sorties to Paris to attend to things like talking to me — and head to his new home in Normandy. He moved to Normandy, he said, because there you could buy a big house cheaply. By house, he meant one built in the 18th century, a castle basically, though he didn’t show me a picture. His wife, Qianyum Lysis Li, who is 34 — a former literature student who wrote her thesis on his work — is living at Castle Houellebecq, decorating the place, he said.’

(…)

‘Houellebecq had stipulated that we would speak for two hours each day and then go to dinner, and so we went to dinner. As he talked, he would trail off and then sleepily list to the left and, as his head lightly knocked the glass window-door of the restaurant, stir, returning to sit semi-upright, semi-awake. When it was, at last, over, he asked to meet earlier the next day, as if to acknowledge that were we to go too late again, he might have trouble remaining conscious.’

(…)

‘This is what Houellebecq, at his best, does: hook the reader with a portrait of a man’s limitations only to put him through a series of narrative paces that march him to an end — end of life, end of prospects, end of story — and elicit the compassion necessary to see him for more than his glaring shortcomings.’

Read the article here.

I can recommend Houellebecq, yes behind the cynicism sentimentalism always lurks. But Houellebecq manages to overcome the shortcomings of melodrama.

The controversy about the erotic movie is slightly more interesting than the summarization in this article: 'In talking about porn, he spoke of the beauty of videos he has seen in which couples are engaged in loving sex on OnlyFans and how marvelous it was that they decided to share it with the world. I suggested that most such videos are revenge porn. While he conceded that this might be the case, he was not to be dissuaded. This was paradoxical in the extreme, given his own collaboration in 2022 and 2023 with a Dutch art collective, KIRAC, on an erotic film. It depicts sex between young women and a man, who may or not be Houellebecq (his agreement stipulated that his face and genitals not be shown in the same frame). Houellebecq sued to stop its release, and in a subsequent book on that period in his life, he refers to the male filmmaker as “the cockroach” and to a female KIRAC member as “the sow.”'

See also here.

The best sentence in this article: ‘He might have trouble remaining conscious.’

Sooner or later, the author becomes his own character. A fate that should be postponed as long as possible by any means necessary.