Are there any authors that offer a more optimistic view of the modern age or at least disagree with Houellebecq's...

Are there any authors that offer a more optimistic view of the modern age or at least disagree with Houellebecq's analysis of today?

noting more boring than nihilism

>bawww muslims are taking over

yeah tell me about it, it will take 30-40 years though and you'll be old or dead by then.

Dude its hard to find any author that doesn't have a more optimistic view than Houellebecq

David Foster Wallace in particular (ironically given his suicide) presents a very positive attitude while not really disagreeing with Houellebecq's framing of society.

Come, now, you know better. Fundamentalisms in all their forms are bad faith reactions to nihilism and too much self-knowledge. That they are so WILDLY popular really should give you pause, as it means a huge portion of your fellow humans are incapable, as it stands, of living in the world as it actually 'is', and will go to great lengths to refashion it along lines suited to their regressive mindsets.

>it will take 30-40 years though and you'll be old or dead by then

But a whole generation will just be reaching their 50s and will have children to raise (maybe)

Hell I'll only be 51

yeah they will continue having the modern equivalent of tv dinner until it's time for cancer trigger to kick in or an artery to clog up thank you very much.

tv and radio are harmless distractions compared to net 2.0, plus nobody will read books in several decades.

>David Foster Wallace in particular (ironically given his suicide)
I didn't know this.
All the jokes about him now for over a year and I didn't know the chump killed himself.

"Not really disagreeing with Houellebecq's framing of society"

How do you figure? Wallace believed in and valued a social community, Houellebecq believes that man's condition in 'society' is, well, atomised.

They still had the same view of being increasingly intellectually isolated in a society that is degrading into empty enjoyment and spectacle while struggling to see any worthwhile principal to react to it with but blunt sincerity.
Even then their attitudes only differ in their approach to presenting themselves, Houellebecq still strives towards the possibilities of love and affection in his novels even if they're impossible dreams. His divergence is just that he prefers to present himself as a spiteful monster to others as a provocative front and because he had a really shitty childhood

I really like that cover. I don't know why.

Came to say this.

Just read a goodreads review, does Houellebecq really invoke quantum physics in this novel? What education does he have in quantum physics that would give him any insight or even base-level knowledge of this topic?

Or is he just a posturing pseud, like 99% of litfic authors?

>quantum physics is magic shit that only super wizards can understand

The shit is simple, what qualification do you have to pretend otherwise?

>Or is he just a posturing pseud, like 99% of litfic authors?

he's Balzac + Celine, all watered down by 20 or 30%, which is still better than most of whats out there. It's hard to tell if that watering down in part of his aesthetic (one of deliberately cultivated dullness) or just inferiority

I couldn't get through this book because I couldn't stand the main character Bruno. The ideas have to be really good to justify following a spiteful, unhappy pervert around on his disgusting exploits for 15 or 20 hours of your life

and yeah, the science stuff that he tacks on is meh. its too obvious, you see it coming from a mile away with neon signs pointing at it. Have some damn subtlety. Its like an inversion of 19th century novels where you have drippy passages about God every 5 or 10 pages that tend to get a little tedious and hammy

tldr I think Houellebecq is a better sociologist than artist. He's worth reading for the social criticism if you can stomach the mopey pornography

Hey look, a posturing pseud defending his posturing pseud lit

Bad authors really like shocking material. They think it's an easy way to evoke emotion. Maybe it is, but I read a passage about Bruno masturbating on the train and didn't feel a single thing. It was pretty bland by my standards.

They also like mentioning science and math, because science and math is for smart people, even though it's always completely irrelevant to anything they're trying to say.

I really think you guys are wasting your life reading this schlock, but to each his own.

>They also like mentioning science and math, because science and math is for smart people, even though it's always completely irrelevant to anything they're trying to say.

I think he uses it to distinguish the perspectives of Bruno and Michel as they come to terms with their societal shortcomings. As a smart person, this really appealed to me

i think youll find most French authors have a similar tone apathy seems almost part of their culture

you might like mathias enard
- street of thieves
- zone

did you like zone? what's the point?

>noting more boring than nihilism
>proceeds to act nihilistic

Submission is great and optimistic if you're willing to submit

yeah, no, I'll take islamic fundamentalism over the status quo any day

it's very satisfying for me that regardless of whether Europe adopts a nationalistic stance and drives muslims out or adopts islam, milquetoast liberals have no place in the future

I never quite understand the need to like Houellebecq's main characters...I'd even go so far as to say that he demands that you hate them.
The main characters of Platform were incredibly bourgeois and repulsive...surely this is his critique of the nihilistic, compulsively hedonistic offspring of hippie dippy baby boomers.
I think his contention isn't that Europe is dying now, it was dead since may '68 culture and it's overtly analyzed after waves resulted in the garbage bin continent we're in now.

His work is a deeply cynical eulogy of the faux-intellectual Europe of yesteryear.

>being this close to the point and missing it

its a classic trait of the contrarian new-age meme-man

Finally someone who understand Houellebecq

The dude is crushed under the weight of his own empathy, It's moronic that he's co-opted by rightwingers and considered vile by the french media

Pretty much this familia, Atomised is a book mostly concerned with the idea of love after the sexual revolution of the 60's. He goes extremely over the top in some instances purposefully - he lulls you into something which seems believable and then hops directly to the logical conclusion, which is always something vile.

Bruno is one of the saddest figures in post-WWII European literature. He is a despicable man but I cannot help but empathize with him.

what did houellebecq say?