Houellebecq

idk it's the first book by him I've read but it's very good. I was hoping for some insight from people here who have read him more extensively/deeply. I'm just so surprised in the high quality of the material because I haven't heard him mentioned here except maybe a handful of times. I didn't think I would enjoy a fiction book this much again, it's been a while since I've read fiction. I'm pleased to see that there are contemporary writers putting stuff out there that isn't stale and limpid. This book is really full of vitality and pushing boundaries in an auhthentic way, not for the sake of edginess.

—¿Crees que se ha jodido?
—Claro. Se jodió hace tiempo, al principio. Raphaël, tu nunca serás el dueño erótico de una chica. Tienes que hacerte cargo; esas cosas no son para ti. De todas formas, ya es demasiado tarde. El fracaso sexual que has tenido desde tu adolescencia, Raphaël, la frustración que te persigue desde los trece años, ya han dejado en ti una marca imborrable. Incluso suponiendo que pudieras conseguir alguna mujer a partir de ahora —cosa que, con toda franqueza, no creo que vaya a suceder—, no será bastante; ya nada será nunca bastante. Siempre serás huérfano de esos amores adolescentes que no tuviste. En ti la herida ya es muy dolorosa; pero lo será cada vez más. Una amargura atroz, sin remisión, que terminara inundándote el corazón. Para ti no habrá ni redención ni liberación. Así son las cosas.

He weaves those political and philosophical themes into the story in a way that's so natural, when other authors who would try to do that would come out forced. I think he might be the only author today who has captured the real zeitgeist of our age, in its abject and naked reality, without sentimentalizing about it, without hypocritically glossing over anything. His writing is refreshingly honest. You see contemporary reality for what it is. It's simple, blunt, and it often hits right where it hurts. I didn't think the zeitgeist of our time could be so accurately captured till I read him. I think he really succeeded there.

So this is why he's so misanthropic (and anti-hippie)

I'll add: I think our age (especially the culture of our age) has a lot of skeletons in its closet, and he seems to be the only one talking about it in a blunt and direct fashion, without any sentimentality and hypocritical platitudes or rhetorical deflections. He also explores the roots of these issues, and his theories in that regard are compelling and interesting.

There's no bullshit with Houellebecq, he has the gall to call things as they really are and face the nastiest and most banal sides of ourselves and life today.
Most other writers I come across today are only looking to exalt themselves in a pagentry and tow all the attitudes a writer "ought to have". Houellebecq is as individual as any poster you can come across here recounting his most frank beliefs and is quite funny and tender about it too

Nice, definitely something I'll check out soon

Hey.

I want to comment, but don't know who he is.

Can you give me a tl:dr on all his works?

Thank you

After having the initial meme-exposure, I purchased a copy of Whatever and read it during work breaks in a musicless, windowless room at the grocery where I am employed. I did this while a thirty-plus man who has never had sex with a woman and mostly-intentionally do (does) not seek or maintain a meaningful social life.

Let's just say that the experience of the book's latter half hit pretty hard and it spoke to me, and let's leave it at that. My interpretation of the book's end is that the narrator went innawoods and committed suicide, a familiar notion.

I have a copy of map & territory but that one looks like a bit more work and I have other stuff I'd rather do at the moment.

Why dont you get a job you punk

Why don't you learn how to read, you embarassing non-virgin.

His writing in one sense seems so bleak and pessimistic. He likes to unravel some of the most pathetic things modern man has concealed in his heart. At the same time his writing strangely gives me hope. It reminds me that I'm not delusional, it's not just in my head―the modern world really is fucked up, and in writing about it so effectively he's letting me know that I'm not the only one who sees it. It kind of gives you hope to know you aren't alone in feeling that our contemporary culture is fucked up.

I think Houellebecq is a very compassionate person

I can read and spell better than you user i actually have a job and pay my taxes why dont you stop kicking the can and get your life together

Me too. He deliberately provokes the opposite image of himself in the popular press in order to weed out the superficial. Michel Houellebecq reminds me of a character out of a Dostoevsky novel.

I haven't read him, but I am prone to this sort of viewpoint and I think it's only possible if you're coming from a place where you care deeply about humanity. Only an empathetic person could have the insight into society you guys are ascribing to him, and fixating on its flaws belies a wish (if not a hope) that we lived in a better world.

I just read the interview with him in the Paris Review and he's surprisingly into sci fi, which often focuses on utopias/dystopias. I could see him being the sort of person who frequently imagines a better way of doing things and then picks apart all the ways it could never work in practice.

He's a Roux de Poux

what does that mean?

franglicized way of saying soup of shit, I think

Care to elaborate?

>surprisingly into sci fi
haven't read it but it looks like one of his books is sci-fi
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Possibility_of_an_Island

The cover looks like an ad for some sort of aquatic perfume from 2003
Book looks interesting, too.

? Okay

I read Submission and I totally disliked it. Mind you I only read it last year, after the hype died down. It was a flimsy exercise in self loathing, that shat on everything and offered nothing in return. A 300 page meme, if you will. I got the sense, that this men is a fraud, that only stirs up rumors, so no one might see, that he doesn't have enough substance to back it

Despite all we throw at the ethnic French, they still remain the most Veeky Forums population.

sad, but true

>offered nothing in return

Not true, you're clearly a poor reader and simply easily upset

honestly? yeah I was upset at first, but then I read up on interviews with the dude and figured that's what he wants and continued with a distant attitude and nothing ... there is nothing there.
And I gotta say Jelinek does this style better and Timur Vernes did the theme better.

anyone has that quote about never being desired like a sex object?

roody poo?

would you describe him as sex-negative? of the little I've read of him, the most immediate comparison for me was Peter Sotos or Andrea Dworkin, except French and more humorous. that might seem like a stretch but I find them all connected by a distrust of the sexual revolution and "hippie" sexual politics, to the extent that they sometimes reach hyperbolic levels of sexual disgust in their writings.

sex is inherently disgusting

>inherently
I don't think you know what that word means

with you, maybe

btfo

you mean a simple picture of him? it gives you the gist.
definately ... probably because he ain't hitting nothing but bored hookers.

I haven't read any of his fiction but his work 'To Stay Alive' literally pulled me out of a sort of existential stupor and depression which I've been stuck in for the past year or so.

I'm unsure of whether that says more about myself or his work, either way it was a powerful experience for me.

Sir Soviet GTFO.

where the houellebecq girls at

I'm halfway through "Whatever". It's fine, but I feel like I get the point already, is it worth finishing

greatest living author, everything he writes is extremely relevant

>of the little I've read of him, the most immediate comparison for me was Peter Sotos or Andrea Dworkin
Wow, so much for checking him out then.

Women are a meme

he definitely has groupies. i wish i was french, they treat philosophers and artists like rosckstars over there

OP's pic is actually one of the most attractive ones of him.

truly, a modern day diogenes

Louis C.K. is the modern day Diogenes.

Said it very well

>He also explores the roots of these issues, and his theories in that regard are compelling and interesting
Is it capitalism?

It is capitalism, isn't it?

He looks like one of those old pedos you'd see camping around those nudie beaches in Europe .

In part, there's much more to it.

I agree with you. He's grossly overrated - as the majority of today's french writers are, including Modiano, for example. Submission and Lanzarote are absolute trash. I really don't understand what people see in his books.

Yes.

I just finished submission yesterday. It's a very effective satire of modern Western society and its morality. In the end the book does leave the reader wanting.

I didn't enjoy the work that much, but then maybe it was aimed at a different audience.

that's a pretty tenuous comparison. he's much more palatable than either.

bump

what did he mean by this

Are you sure this isn't Pynchon?

Houellebecq is going to be remembered. Even his name sounds ready for the canon.

Yes, it's from elementary particles

Read elementary particles and while it was easy to read, it seemed too simplistic. The guy has the biggest mommy complex.

greatest living author

His mother was a horrible cunt so go figure

this is so catchy

huh?

Why every fucking writer has a picture smoking?
Where does this edgy complex came from?

he chainsmokes

he smokes like 4 packs a day, or at least he used to. mentioned in an interview he was trying to cut back

bolaño is better

He's french to begin with, and he's a writer. No wonder he fucking smokes like a lunatic lol

He's cutting back on the number of teeth in his mouth.

is there some kind of competition between them? why mention him? whats their relation?

he has feminine sensibilities and definitely at least one third woman. What sort of man experiences sex as “floating”?

disgusting low life “it’s not me who’s the problem, it’s modernity” core posters get out and read some lastpsychiatrist

Joke's on you. Submission and Lanzarote are his worst books. Lanzarote is a failed experiment, which he mended later in Possibilty of an Island. Submission is okay only if you've read all his works and want more just for the sake of it.

>read some lastpsychiatrist
>"hurrr if you identify anything as a problem that's not u then u are a narcisist!!!!"
>"hurrr everyone is a narcisist!!"
>"lol michael bay amirite"
wow thanks for the recommendation

Alright, the comparison to Dworkin scared me off, but this rekindled my interest.

Yes, doesn't quite reach the profundity of

>hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreverythingiseveryoneelsesfaultandalsocapitalismtooaswellhurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

butthurt nationalists detected.....

>lastpsychiatrist
Wait do people actually take this seriously instead of just a fun read? Wew

yeh like they should gb/pole/ :roleyes: ...

About as serious as contemporary French prose.

LIL BECQ
YUH
OOU

with some it's posturing, with houellebecq it's probably simply because it's hard to catch him without a cigarette

>le deep cigarette man

Daily reminder that Houellebeq's biography is free online but no Frenchfag is man enough to translate it for us:

scribd.com/doc/185072322/Houellebecq-Non-Autorise-Enquete-Denis-Demonpion

But that ending really confused me. Why did these genetically superior beings write this book to commemorate their creator and his brother but spend a very long time discussing Brunos penis and his sexual interests and not the science that went into making them?

Vote for Joe Caruso
savejersey.com/2018/01/poll-congress-rodney-frelinghuysen-new-jersey-house-candidate/

This is the text-equivalent of a temper tantrum

Submission was cool. Anyone who says it isn't pro-Islam is retarded.

>". It's a curious thing, the thirst for knowledge ... very few people have it, you know, even among scientists. Most of them are happy to make a career for themselves and Inove into management, but it's incredibly important to the history of humanity. It's easy to imagine a fable in which a small group of men—a couple hundred, at most, in the whole world—work intensively on something very difficult, very abstract, completely incomprehensible to the uninitiated. These men remain completely unknown to the rest of the world; they have no apparent power, no money, no honors; nobody can understand the pleasure they get from their work. In fact, they are the most powerful men in the world, for one simple reason: they hold the keys to rational certainty. Everything they declare to be true will be accepted, sooner or later, by the whole population. There is no power in the world-economic, political, religious or social-that can compete with rational certainty"

put spoilers faggot