Héléna Marienské: Le Degré suprême de la tendresse (2008)

In the Prologue to Héléna Marienské's Le Degré suprême de la tendresse – the title being taken from the macho Salvador Dalí's definition of cannibalism – the narrator relates a fait divers or news item she heard about a drunken couple leaving a bar in the Bastille area. We are told to remember the place, the passage des Taillandiers (a taillandier being a maker of cutting tools). The young woman is forced to perform fellatio on the man, but she uses extreme force and gives him a glansectomy, cutting off his glans penis (or bell-end in common parlance), letting it roll into the gutter for the pompiers to retrieve. Yes, this is a feminist book to make men wince in parts.

And although there are some pretty gruesome episodes in it, the erotically suggestive nature of the cover conceals a very clever, and often very comical, novel. Although many in the Anglophone world would perhaps disagree with the French world's much more flexible description of this book as a 'novel', because it consists of eight very separate parts, each is linked by that particular sex act, and each written in a different pastiche of a French author: Michel Houellebecq, Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Jean de La Fontaine, Christine Angot, Michel de Montaigne, Vincent Ravalec, and Georges Perec. My aim here is not to comment on all eight pastiches, but simply to comment on a few aspects of the book which particularly captured my attention.

The first – 'Restriction du domaine' – is an obvious comment on Houellebecq's Extension du domaine de la lutte, and the 'restriction' evidently relates to the severing of the organ, so we know where the stories are leading, but we don't know how. Although we know the area when we laugh at the Houellebecqian cynicism, the obsession with sex, and the restricted sex. For instance, the protagonist Pierre Hitkartoff has troubles with getting an erection, although he experiences something of a new lease of life when he becomes a writer. Needless to say, perhaps, there's a particularly violent scene in it when Pierre loses not only his glans penis but also his limbs.

I'm unfamiliar with Tallemant des Réaux (1619–92), let alone his Historiettes, but then Marienské does say in the Prologue that he's little known, and that it's not necessary to be familiar with his work to enjoy the story, and it certainly isn't. Here we have the very sassy fourteen-year-old Marquise Héloïse who's far too independent for her own good, although the reader surely applauds when she bites a few centimeters from the sexually aggressive Capitaine's organ. The king Louis XII has already experienced the young girl's cheekiness, so locks her away in a convent to, er, keep her mouth shut. On pretending to be penitent there though, she asks the Mother Superior for a a crucifix and a hairshirt: she then stuns the Mother with the former, gags her with the latter and runs off to marry a Turkish Sultan!

Another name I was unfamiliar with is the contemporary Vincent Ravalec, whose writing is imitated in this way, with my translation here:

'Virgi's life at the time, it was pure Zola. One stoned evening when we were mates, real mates I mean, Virginia had told us that her father, long-term unemployed embittered by the vicissitudes of his existence, used to sodomize her without Vaseline when he wasn't bashing her mother. She found that really shitty. She was seventeen years old, [...] and no shit, Daddy's perverse practices really stank.'

She goes to see an overworked social worker who just gives her five euros for a tub of Vaseline, so with the male narrator she escapes, becomes a rich high-class prostitute and to cope takes lots of drug cocktails, and the narrative helterskelters into surreal multiple glansectomies, but somehow works its way into a kind of happy ending. Weird.

Next there is the final story dedicated to 'G.P', or Georges Perec, but Marienské couldn't say that because – unlike the previously story mentioned above which has chemical Es in it – this is like Perec's La Disparition in which there are no typographical Es in it. And there are some of the characters in Perec's novel here. There are also, like Perec's novel – many tortuous sentences which abound with foreign words and phrases ('miniskirt' for 'minijupe', 'nada' for 'rien', etc), many slang or familiar words ('toubib' for 'docteur' or 'médecin', 'gus' for 'mec', 'soutif' for 'soutien-gorge', etc), slightly odd expressions ('cubain' for 'cigare', 'RV' for 'rendez-vous') – all to dodge the e-word: inevitably, the plot tends to go adrift as you marvel at the inventiveness.

Yes, a very clever book which all-in-all manages not quite to get too lost in its own cleverness. A book with real bite (although slightly less in the French sense).

Michel Houellebecq: La Carte et le territoire | The Map and the Territory (2010)

Finally, Michel Houellebecq won the Goncourt in 2010, with a book that doesn't contain graphic sex scenes, that doesn't really contain anything controversial, but it's his longest novel to date and contains just two central characters: the artist Jed Martin and the writer Michel Houellebecq.

Apart from a brief (kind of) introduction and a slightly longer 'Epilogue' (actually named so),  La Carte et le territoire is in three unnamed and almost equal parts: the first deals with Jed Martin's photographic career, the second his career as a painter and his relationship with Houellebecq, and the third is essentially a digressive detective story about the murder of Houellebecq and the solving of its mystery. Particularly in the first two parts, there are references to a number of people both real and imagined.

Jed Martin then is a the main character in the first part, which traces the artistic ascent of the single Jed Martin, who initially makes his name as a photographer of Michelin maps, in the process becoming the lover of the beautiful Russian girl Olga, who works for Michelin and both the girl and the company give their full support for what Jed is doing. When Olga decides to return to Russia for a much more remunerative post Jed declines to leave with her, although both parties are obviously upset by the split. And so ends what we might call the first part of Jed's artistic career.

The second part traces Jed's career as a painter, which is when he becomes associated with the self-confessed non-intellectual but entrepreneurial galeriste Franz: their partnership will bring in megabucks that allow Jed to retire as a near-recluse. Olga returns to Paris, but Jed considers that she will be better off without him. A vital element in the second part is Jed managing to secure Houellebecq's agreement to write the Introduction to Jed's forthcoming exhibition programme. This is where some of the book's amusement lies: in the exaggerated, self-deprecatory descriptions of the alcoholic Houellebecq, who lives as a virtual recluse in rural Shannon. Five to ten pages are all that are needed and the difficult Houellebecq has the choice between a lump sum of ten thousand euros or a painting by Jed. A portrait of the writer is decided on, which involves re-visiting him and taking many photos of this man who now glugs down Jed's four hundred euro wine as if it were plonk and is clearly not in an altogether sober or coherent state. But the exhibition proceeds after the writer puts together fifty pages, Houellebecq gets a painting worth very much more than the original fee in euros, and that's, well, not exactly the end.

The third part could have read as a straightforward detective story, only there are digressions that certainly wouldn't have been out of place in David Foster Wallace's fiction or non-fiction. There is a horrific murder of Michel Houellebecq, beheaded at his home along with his dog, and anatomical pieces are spread about the room as if they are art exhibits. (This means it's time for the reader to be told about the cop Jasselin's oligospermatic problems, and an explanation of the meaning, and the fact that he and his wife choose to have a dog instead, but although they succeed in getting their dog Michel to mate and produce Michou, they could no longer have a dog of the same family after that as Michou's testicles won't descend because his dad is too old. Ahh.) Anyway, the crime has no apparent motive, until towards the end a versed-in-art cop realises that a collector of rare insects as well as art has the portrait of Houellebecq, worth by that time maybe twelve million euros. Retirement time for Jed.

As so often with Houellebecq, there are a number of references to what it is like to live in the modern world of capitalism-gone-mad, of which these are only too examples: Jed listening for ever to the phone 'music' as he waits to put in a request for someone to service his heater, when the Croatian guy a few blocks away can do the job much faster and no doubt much cheaper; and the ludicrously cheap airline company that's not so cheap after various bits are added to the bill.

Right at the beginning of the novel we have the failed portrait of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst that Jed is forced to slash in frustration at being unable to get Koons' face right, although the painting of the meeting between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is a highly lucrative seller. There are several references to writer and critic Frédéric Beigbeder, whom I'm sure Jed didn't paint, although there's mention of him as a Sartre for the 2010s. Well...

Well, the above comment may require absolutely no thought, or a great deal of it, although it takes me no thought at all to see this as the best novel by Houellebecq I've yet read. Which makes me feel a little squeamish about attacking Soumission so shortly after this – I have a few (maybe unfounded, admittedly) doubts about that one.

My other posts on Michel Houellebecq:

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Michel Houellebecq: Platforme | Platform
Michel Houellebecq: Les Particules élémentaires | Atomised

Michel Houellebecq: Plateforme | Platform (2001)

I read Michel Houellebecq's Extension du domaine de la lutte (bizarrely translated as Whatever) some years ago, and recently re-read Les Particules élémentaires and still couldn't really see what all the fuss is over the writer. After reading Plateforme, though, I'm starting to come round.

Houellebecq of course triumphed in 2010 (in spite of Tahar Ben Jelloun's great animosity) by winning the Goncourt with La Carte et le territoire. A number of French writers and critics call him a 'great' writer; Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, 'secrétaire perpétual' of the Académie française,  expressed her support for Houellebecq as a future member; and Frédéric Beigbeder claims that he is France's greatest living writer by far – Houellebecq, that is, not himself!

Some journalists have noticed that Houellebecq appears to have aged about twenty years since his Goncourt victory, although to my knowledge no one has suggested why this is. Certainly if his new book Soumission – whose publication was completely submerged by the Charlie hebdo tragedy on the same day – is anything to go by he hasn't lost his love of controversy.

But to return to the subject, as I'm saving the reading of Soumission until I've read a few more of the earlier books: this is definitely the best Houellebecq novel I've read so far. And another brief mention of Beigbeder – who in 2011 rated this as Houellebecq's best book – he also rates it as the eighth best book published in the last hundred years. (Beigbeder also mentions a great number of other things in Premier bilan après l'apocalypse, some of which are eccentrically idiosyncratic, so we'll move on.)

As Camus's L'Étranger begins with the protagonist Meursault's mother's death, so Plateforme begins with a sentence about protagonist Michel's father's death a year earlier. And like Meursault, Michel is something of a nihilist: as is Houellebecq? Well, Michel is a character in a book, so let's not jump to hasty conclusions.

The novel is easy to sum up: reasonably comfortable single civil servant (in the culture sector) goes on holiday to Thailand, enjoys the sex on offer, then returns and immediately forms the relationship of his life with Valérie, who was also a single on the same holiday but whom he largely avoided. Coincidentally, Valérie works in the tourist industry but earns much more than Michel: she's a go-getter and climbs the capitalist tree very rapidly. Then Michel – who really isn't into capitalism – suggests that her very slightly underachieving firm branches out into sex tourism, which it does, and with great success. But by then Valérie has fallen in love with Thailand as well as with Michel, and she's prepared to take a huge drop in salary to work for the company there, continuing to live with Michel. But then terrorists strike, killing over 200 people, one of whom is Valérie, and again Michel is alone with his nihilism, but this time permanently in Thailand.

Obviously, my above paragraph leaves out a great deal. It leaves out the controversies: Houellebecq's real criticism of Islam came from his remarks made after the publication of the book; his apparent advocacy – sorry, the narrator's apparent advocacy – of sex tourism was bound to offend many people; and certainly, his insults about the Guide du Routard offended the makers.

It leaves out the love story, and this is without doubt a love story. Valérie and Michel may have other partners, but this is a free-thinking couple and they share partners with each other at the same time on a one-off basis. The essential issue here is their love, which transforms them both, and which existentially destroys Michel when his lover dies.

It leaves out all the sex, and there is much of it, some of it often very graphic.

It leaves out the comic parts, and there are many of them. I particularly liked 'Living without reading is dangerous, you have to put up with life, which can lead to taking risks.' But much of the amusement in this novel comes from situations, such as the barman-cum-waiter in Cuba in his swimming trunks shaking his 'three-piece kit' at the Québecan widows as he serves their dinner and makes them quake with sexual excitement.

It leaves out the satire, for instance, of the art world in the form of Bertrand Bredane, who appears to be a Damien Hirst-gone-mad with his installations of young girls with rotting meat in their underpants, and flies bred from the excretions of other flies and let loose on the spectators.

It leaves out the ideas, such as the decline of sex in the modern world, and sex between two people who love each other degenerating into sex between two people who dislike each other, and perhaps this leads to sado-masochism? Unless capitalists can find a rare way of making money automatically then they'll always be at war with others, vying to make more, and this is beyond any doubt a criticism, a break with the nihilism, but there's no point at all in voting, and politicians are only good for laughing at on television.

Most of all, it leaves out the fact that Houellebecq is constructing a picture – distorted, but maybe not terribly so – of the modern world, of how we live, of how we are torturing both ourselves and each other in pursuit of the unattainable.

I'm sure many people hate Houellebecq, but many love him, although it seems unusual to feel about him the way he – or should that again be his central character – feels about life: a shrug of the shoulders, a je-m'en-foutiste attitude. I loved it.

My other posts on Michel Houellebecq:

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Michel Houellebecq: La Carte et le territoire | The Map and the Territory
Michel Houellebecq: Les Particules élémentaires | Atomised

Charlie Hebdo and Michel Houellebecq

As the world now knows, the four cartoonists Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier, also the director), Cabu (Jean Cabut), Wolinski (Georges Wolinski) and Tignous (Bernard Verlhac) were assassinated by terrorists at the Charlie Hebdo office in the 11th arrondissement of Paris today. This is a terrific loss.

The satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo comes out on Wednesdays, and coincidentally today's issue contains the above sketch by Luz (Renald Luzier) regarding Michel Houellebecq, whose new speculative novel Soumission (the French translation of the word 'Islam', meaning 'submission') was published today. The headline reads: 'The predictions of the magus Houellebecq: "In 2015 I'll lose my teeth... In 2022 [the year in which Soumission is set] I'll celebrate Ramadan".'

I speak of coincidence because the terrorist attack was apparently carried out at the time and on the day of the week that the assassins knew that everyone would be together at the office for their weekly meeting. So there seems to be no relation whatsoever between the horrific attack on Charlie Hebdo and the publication of Houellebecq's book, which envisages a future France ruled by an Islamic political party.

ADDENDUM 1: How much actual support as opposed to coverage has the UK press given to this atrocity? Not a lot, as they don't seem to understand much at all about French culture! (Although I like the Independent cartoon of the middle finger of a cartoonist rising from a blood-soaked copy of Charlie Hebdo, because it shows a definite understanding of the paper's diehard mind!) NB: The Guardian has since announced a donation of £100,000!

ADDENDUM 2: The French press has drawn attention to 'Anglo-Saxon' papers' pusillanimity concerning the affair by showing images from some of the papers actually censoring out 'offending' images from example front page copies of certain Charlie Hebdo issues. As Charlie famously said: 'Rire bordel de Dieu!', which could be translated as 'Fucking laugh for Christ's sake!'. Not the thing to do on a day of mourning, OK, but laughter is the very weapon Charlie use to convey its message: pity that not everyone understood it that way though.

ADDENDUM 3: Le Monde has just (21:47 English time 08/01/2015) announced that Michel Houellebecq has suspended plans to promote his new book Soumission. Instead, he is leaving Paris to 'get away from it all'. His friend Bernard Maris – who published Houellebecq économiste last September – was one of the victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

ADDENDUM 4: Now that it seems that France has found and got rid of the instigators of the insane attack on Charlie Hebdo, I can only hope that the events of today (9 January 2015) and the last few days don't have repercussions, and that everyone will realise that there is a major difference between 'Islamo-fascism' and true Islam, which is a peaceful religion. I fear, though, that extreme right-wing parties such as the Front National and its misguided followers will view today's events as a reason to reinforce a racist platform. I was struck by this web page from the Nouvel Observateur, which lists attacks on Islam, but also shows a picture of a Muslim holding a typed paper saying 'PAS EN MON NOM' ('NOT IN MY NAME'). (This of course is what many of us said about the obscene Bush-Blair pact, the plan to destroy Iraq.) No, the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam: it was the result of a few crazed individuals, nothing more. The web page is here.

Michel Houellebecq: Les Particules élémentaires | Atomised (1998)

In 1994 Michel Houellebecq published his first novel, which was bizarrely translated into English as Whatever. I say 'bizarre' because the English title misses out the meaning behind the original title Extension du domaine de la lutte. Houellebecq's allusion was to the Marxist class struggle ('lutte') of financially rich and financially poor being extended to the sex rich and the sex poor. Les Particules élémentaires continues and extends the arguments.

It was expected by many that this novel would win the Prix Goncourt of 1998, although it came as a great surprise – indeed as a shock to many – that Paule Constant won with Confidence pour confidence. Some reviewers even compared this unexpected result to the 'scandal' of Guy Mazeline winning the 1932 Goncourt with Les Loups (a book and a writer long forgotten) instead of Céline's masterpiece Voyage au bout de la nuit. Houellebecq eventually won the Goncourt with La Carte et le territoire, although not before a second unexpected occurrence: oddly, in 2005 François Weyergans's Trois Jours chez ma mère was absent from the first selection, but appeared in the second and third selections and went on to beat Houellebecq's La Possibilité d'une île (Island).

The above are a few examples of Goncourt oddities, although perhaps the oddest thing in the history of Les Particules élémentaires is Lucie Ceccaldi – Houellebecq's eighty-three-year-old mother – turning up on the French literary scene in 2008 not only in an attempt to denounce her son as a liar, but to do so in her book L'Innocente, a 413-page rant.

Controversy has not so much dogged Houellebecq throughout his writing career as helped him to achieve a very high level of fame over a relatively short time. Does he deserve it, or is this book in particular just the pessimistic, pretentious verbiage that some people have attacked it for? In a word, yes, I think he does deserve high acclaim.

But it's difficult, in a few words, to say what kind of book this is. It is to a small extent fictionalised autobiography, certainly, but it is also a denunciation of the hippie period and contemporary French society in general, it is a pornographic novel, a horror story, a scientific tract, and even a work of science fiction. In parts, it also manages to be surprisingly tender.

Michel Djerzinski and his half-brother Bruno have been abandoned by their mother, who has gone off to join a hippie colony. Michel grows up to be a molecular biologist with little desire for sex and an inability to love. Bruno is physically and sexually abused at school, and grows up obsessed with sex, to the point of it driving him mad: at one point, as a school teacher he masturbates in front of a fifteen-year-old girl and he subsequently becomes an inmate in a psychiatric hospital.

Via Bruno in particular, Les Particules élémentaires attacks the soixante-huitards (the hippie generation) for their hedonism and suggests that one of the natural results of this attitude was the monster Charles Manson. (I wholly disagree with this theory, but no matter.)

The body's decay and the ageing process in general  are prominent in the novel, and in spite of both Bruno and Michel finding brief companionship (of rather different kinds) in Christiane and Annabelle  respectively, both women kill themselves: the first as a result of paralysis, the second after a hysterectomy.

Bruno finishes up going back to the psychiatric hospital, his libido lost in a chemical straitjacket. But although Michel also eventually kills himself, it's not without creating a great name for himself as a scientist – cloning, creating the people of the future: immortal and sterile.

My other posts on Michel Houellebecq:

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Michel Houellebecq: Platforme | Platform
Michel Houellebecq: La Carte et le territoire | The Map and the Territory

Michel Houellebecq's La carte et le territoire: Winner of the Prix Goncourt 2010

No surprise then. After three misses - with Les particules élémentaires (1998), Plateforme (2001) and La possibilité d’une île (2005) - Michel Houellebecq wins the prix Goncourt with La carte et le territoire: Maylis de Kerangal's Naissance d'un pont winning the prix Médicis meant it was highly unlikely that she'd get another biggie; the Académie Goncourt is far too strait-laced for the majority of the panel to choose Virginie Despentes's Apocalypse bébé, although let's note that it has just won the Renaudot; and hasn't Mathias Enard - whose Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants is generally considered by critics to lack the power of Zone - got a long way to go yet? All in all, it had to be Houellebecq.