I'd like to discuss Houellebecq's debut novel "Whatever" / "Extension of the Domain of the Struggle".
I have just re-read the first several opening chapters and noticed the great subtlety of his work which he hides skillfully behind humour or dry observations.
Examples:
>the lost car On face value we could accept the narrator has lost his car, but I believe he is referring also to his "drive", perhaps even his libido. We learn early on that his car has "given me nothing but trouble" and asks "What good's this car?" when considering forgetting about finding it. But a few chapters later while being criticized by his boss the narrator explains to him about his lost car, to which his Chad boss weirdly responds with enormous sympathy: "He didn't know; couldn't have guessed: now he understands".
The book itself is riddled with metaphor, most clearly with the animal stories, and the car is a central one I believe. Notice that Tisserand dies because, like Bruno in Atomised, his "drive" is so unwieldy that it ends up killing him.
Cont...
(please contribute your thoughts)
Benjamin Bell
>subtly account of male / female relationships The big theme of the novel is sexuality and the contemporary state of female / male relationships. While H is accused of being misogynistic, the reality is far more nuanced. The book is only 30k words in length and so he is forced to compound his assertions, theories etc IMO into brief, highly symbolic observations. One is in Ch.7 where he briefly explains why it is that relationships in the West are dying. Women (Catherine) are focusing on careers, using their organisational skills and sexuality to advance (Parrot girl from Ch.1), and become bitter or sex-orientated. Men (Hawaiian shirt guy) are simply sleeping around, suffering as incels, or focusing on themselves in a consumer-obsessed way (Bernard). In Ch.7 Catherine is summarized so as to represent barren career women, while her co-worker first boasts about fucking some girls the night before, then talks on the phone and criticizes some guy named "Old Fred" for crashing his car and killing a female friend of his. Again, the metaphor of the car and of male hypersexuality also contributing to the "crash" of feminism and women in general.
Jaxon Fisher
I'm only on page 27 (I've read it before though) but man Houellebecq's style really is admirable. He is so subtle and clever that he is able to do in 5 pages what some authors fail to do in 200.
Henry Scott
Should I avoid this book if I'm a virgin and don't want to be bitter? I want a gf and to have a positive view of women and myself
Jayden Bell
It's not anti-women, just anti- a kind of woman.
Chase Cooper
What's the significance of Houellebecq killing off the Jewish character?
Jeremiah Brooks
>women are able to think for themselves and thus differ ''no.''
if you want to find out why you're a bitter virgin this book is a great read. it explains in great detail why giving women the right to vote was the worst mistake the west has made.
he lurks /pol/
Mason Jenkins
>it explains in great detail why giving women the right to vote was the worst mistake the west has made. please summarise said detail.
Thomas Ward
Read the novel. You can read it within a day.
Leo Perry
>it explains in great detail why giving women the right to vote was the worst mistake the west has made It's more about the sexual revolution and the 68.
John Thompson
but I want to know now also I read it already and I forgot everything except that it was miserable
Ryder Cox
Houellebecq doesn't like democracy or voting in general. He's stated many times that he doesn't vote in elections, only in referendums.
Dylan Robinson
I like your analysis If I may go pleb I think the premise of the book was simple. Maybe because I resonate it with too much but it is the average tale of the many plain white collars of 90s and 2000s who didn't made enough money to get women with wealth, do were not chads to get women by looks but just average at best and ugly at worst. Anyone who is a manlet, balding, fat, plain old ugly but grew up middle class, and makes decent if not plenty of money in a corporate enviroment would be perfectly comfortable with that book.
Also check out its movie, which is surprisingly quite good and just looking at this image tells you what kind of people the author talks about me thinks.
Alexander Thompson
>when the therapist tells him that he's insane because he hasn't had sex in two (2) years
Camden Barnes
How comes that Houellebecq's books are still being widely praised and tolerated, in a time where being white is considered racist?
Isaac Lee
Because most people are not far left SJW's or far rightwing nationalists who see race/color/nation/gender in everywhere and based their identity on it
Anthony Taylor
europe isnt as fucked as usa in that respect
Lucas Gray
the French are simultaneously repulsive cucked faggots and also based-woke as can be. its remarkable. you can say nigger and fuck 15 year old girls and you can also go to jail for denying the holocaust and talking bad about the State. Fascinating culture, a mixture of Celtic-Gauls (non-Germanic, non-nordic IE people) and native forest goblin europeans. They’re a special people. Shame they’ll get browned before most other countries like Germany or Sweden (evil awful nations) do.
Charles Nguyen
>get browned
France is brown as fuck. Everyone is half arab or whatever there. Especially in the south.
Nathaniel Lee
Have you ever stepped foot inside France? Fucking hell sick and tired of "let me tell you about your country" fags, t. not a frog
Nolan Anderson
We are talking "La Lux Extinguido" kind of brown.
Jackson James
someone on a druggy discord recommended this book to me and I enjoyed it greatly. I wish OP was that someone, because thank you.
Ian Ross
This book has like the worst covers imaginable. Pic related is the german one.
Brayden Moore
what this guy said > the French are simultaneously repulsive cucked faggots and also based-woke as can be
be ignore the rest of his post...there's also been a strong albeit minority current of reactionary intellectuals in france
Easton Hall
always*
Easton Brown
I read this novel over a few days in the windowless, music-less break room of the grocery store where I work. I am past thirty and I have never been inside a woman.
Let's just say that it had an effect on me. Also I believe that the narrator kills himself at the end.
Gavin Butler
i think that's why i like Veeky Forums, no matter how badly i've fucked my life, there's always a guy whose worse off who i can then tell "my god man get it together!"
Joseph Anderson
I love you
William Rodriguez
I feel wrestling with sex impulses is unworthy of high art, so I ignore him. Sex has never interested me.
Angel Martinez
Remain pure. Women are actually cruel. Be thankful you were born a man. I cannot imagine how disgusting a life it must be to live as a woman.
Evan Gutierrez
Being back in retail after years of warehouse work has me thanking myself on that score. They're divorced, prissy, etc.
Grayson Wilson
tfw you fuck girls that look like because you have a decent job and can afford prostitutes
Nicholas Cooper
that pic is so triggering, just imaging prancing around outside in the countryside wearing that dress makes me wanna fap, ok i should quit porn maybe, like 10 years ago i woulda been all sad that i don't have a gf like that, maybe trannyism is a defense mechanism to not feel bad
Nicholas Bailey
Imagine being this incel
Caleb Thompson
>you can also go to jail for denying the holocaust Why send someone to jail for something they're obviously wrong about? Really activates the almonds.
Kayden Sanders
Not that guy but women are literally not worth the effort both due to how annoying they are and more importantly due to the absence of any motivating meaning to life. It's not going anyplace, or if it did, then per the myths it's only doing so for a certain unjustified elect who are not justified in their positive feeling about themselves.