Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq
Houellebecq in 2008
Born Michel Thomas
(1956-02-26) 26 February 1956
Saint-Pierre, Réunion
Occupation Novelist, filmmaker and poet
Website
www.houellebecq.info

Michel Houellebecq (French: [miʃɛl wɛlbɛk]; born Michel Thomas; 26 February 1956)[1] is a French author, filmmaker, and poet.

Having written poetry and a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, he published his first novel, Whatever, in 1994. His next novel, Atomised, published in 1998, brought him international fame as well as controversy. Platform followed in 2001. He published several books of poems, including The Art of Struggle (Le sens du combat) in 1996. After a publicity tour for Platform led to his being taken to court for inciting racial hatred, he moved to Ireland for several years.[2] He currently resides in France,[3] where he has been described as "France’s biggest literary export and, some say, greatest living writer."[4] In 2010 he published La Carte et le Territoire (published the same year in English as The Map and the Territory) which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt; and, in 2015, Submission.

Early life

Houellebecq was born in 1956 on the French island of Réunion, the son of Lucie Ceccaldi, a French doctor born in Algeria of Corsican descent[5] and René Thomas, a ski instructor and mountain guide.[6] He lived in Algeria from the age of five months until 1961, with his maternal grandmother. His website states that his parents "lost interest in his existence pretty quickly" and at the age of six, he was sent to France to live with his paternal grandmother, a communist, while his mother left to live a hippie lifestyle in Brazil with her newly met boyfriend. His grandmother's maiden name was Houellebecq, which he took as his pen name. Later, he went to Lycée Henri Moissan, a high school at Meaux in the north-east of Paris, as a boarder. He then went to Lycée Chaptal in Paris to follow preparation courses in order to qualify for grandes écoles (elite schools). He began attending the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon in 1975. He started a literary review called Karamazov and wrote poetry.

Works and rise to fame

Michel Houellebecq, Warsaw, June 2008

Houellebecq graduated as an agronomist in 1980, married and had a son; then he divorced, became depressed and took up writing poetry. His first poems appeared in 1985 in the magazine La Nouvelle Revue. Six years later, in 1991, he published a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, a teenage passion, with the prophetic subtitle Against the World, Against Life. A short poetical essay named Rester vivant : méthode (To Stay Alive) appeared the same year, dealing with the art of writing as a way of life (or rather, a way of not-dying and being able to write in spite of apathy and disgust for life); it was followed by his first collection of poetry. Meanwhile, he worked as a computer administrator in Paris, including at the French National Assembly, before he became the so-called "pop star of the single generation", starting to gain fame with his debut novel Extension du domaine de la lutte in 1994 (translated by Paul Hammond and published as Whatever).

Throughout the 1990s Houellebecq published several books of poetry and articles in magazines such as L'Infini[7] edited by Philippe Sollers. He lived at this time at the same address as writer Marc-Edouard Nabe, at 103, rue de la Convention in Paris. Nabe wrote about this proximity in Le Vingt-Septieme Livre (2006), comparing both neighbours' careers and the way their writings were met by critics and audiences.[8]

His second novel, Les Particules Élémentaires (translated by Frank Wynne and published in the English-speaking world as Atomised in the UK, or The Elementary Particles in the USA) proved to be his breakthrough, bringing him national, soon international fame and controversy for its intricate mix of brutally honest social commentary and pornographic depictions (two years earlier, in 1996, while working on that novel, being interviewed by Andrew Hussey, he had presciently said : "It will either destroy me or make me famous"[9]). It won the 1998 Prix Novembre, missing the more prestigious Prix Goncourt for which it was the favorite. The novel became an instant "nihilistic classic", and was mostly praised for the boldness of its ideas and thought-provoking qualities, although it was also heavily criticized for its relentless bleakness as well as its vivid depictions of racism, paedophilia, torture, and also for being an apology of eugenism (for instance Michiko Kakutani described it in The New York Times as "a deeply repugnant read"[10]). The novel won Houellebecq (along with his translator, Frank Wynne) the International Dublin Literary Award in 2002.

In 2000, Houellebecq published the short fiction Lanzarote (published in France with a volume of his photographs), in which he develops a number of the themes he would explore in later novels, including sex tourism, fringe religions and cult leaders. His subsequent novel, Platform (2001), confirmed him as a prominent writer. The book is basically a romance told in the first-person by a 40-year-old male arts administrator named Michel, who shares many real life characteristics with the author, including his apathy and low self-esteem ; it includes numerous sex scenes, depicted in crude yet tender terms, and generally presents an approving attitude towards prostitution and sex tourism. The novel's depiction of life and its explicit criticism of Islam (the novel's romance ends with the vivid depiction of a terrorist attack on a sex tourism venue, which was later seen as prophetic of the Bali bombings which happened just a year later), together with an interview its author gave to the magazine Lire, led to accusations against Houellebecq by several organisations, including France's Human Rights League, the Mecca-based World Islamic League as well as the mosques of Paris and Lyon. Charges were brought to trial, but a panel of three judges, delivering their verdict to a packed Paris courtroom, acquitted the author of having provoked 'racial' hatred, ascribing Houellebecq's opinions to the legitimate right of criticizing religions. The huge controversy in the media subsided following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

His next novel, La Possibilité d'une île (The Possibility of an Island, 2005), cycles between three characters' narratives; Daniel 1 (a contemporary stand-up comedian and movie maker renowned for his extreme causticity) alternating with Daniel 24 and then Daniel 25, neo-human clones of Daniel 1. He later adapted and directed the film based on his novel, but the movie was a critical and commercial failure. In 2008, Flammarion published Ennemis publics (Public Enemies), a conversation via e-mail between Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy.

Houellebecq has also released three music CDs on which he recites a selection of his poetry. Two of them, Présence de la mort and Établissement d'un ciel d'alternance (his "best", as handwritten by Houellebecq in the 2007 libretto) were recorded with composer Jean-Jacques Birgé in 1996 for Radio France and Grrr Records labels. Présence humaine (2000), on Bertrand Burgalat's Tricatel label, has a rock band backing him, and has been compared to the works of Serge Gainsbourg in the 1970s.

A recurrent theme in Houellebecq's novels is the intrusion of free-market economics into human relationships and sexuality. The original French title of Whatever (Extension du domaine de la lutte, literally "broadening of the field of struggle") alludes to economic competition extending into the search for relationships. As the book says, a free market has absolute winners and absolute losers, and the same applies to relationships in a society that does not value monogamy but rather exhorts people to seek the happiness that always eludes them through the path of sexual consumerism, in pursuit of narcissistic satisfaction. Similarly, Platform carries to its logical conclusion the touristic phenomenon, where Westerners of both sexes go on organized trips to developing countries in search of exotic locations and climates. In the novel, a similar popular demand arises for sex tourism, organized and sold in a corporate and professional fashion. Sex tourists are willing to sacrifice financially to experience the instinctual expression of sexuality, which has been better preserved in poor countries whose people are focused on the struggle for survival.

Although Houellebecq's work is often credited with building on conservative, if not reactionary, ideas, his critical depiction of the hippie movement, New Age ideology and the May 1968 generation, especially in Atomised, echoes the thesis of Marxist sociologist Michel Clouscard.

His novel The Map and the Territory (La Carte et le Territoire) was released in September 2010 by Flammarion and finally won its author the prestigious Prix Goncourt. This is the tale of an accidental art star and is full of insights on the contemporary art scene. Slate magazine accused him of plagiarising some passages of this book from French Wikipedia.[11] Houellebecq denied that this was plagiarism, stating that "taking passages word for word was not stealing so long as the motives were to recycle them for artistic purposes", evoking the influence of Georges Perec, Lautreamont or Jorge Luis Borges, and advocated the use of all sorts of raw materials in literature, even advertising, recipes or math problems.[12]

On 7 January 2015, the date of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the novel Submission was published. The book describes a future situation in France (2022) when a Muslim party is ruling the country according to Islamic law, which again generated heated controversy and accusations of islamophobia. On the same date, a cartoon of Houellebecq appeared on the cover page of Charlie Hebdo with the caption "The Predictions of Wizard Houellebecq," eerily ironic in retrospect.[13] For the second time, his fictional work appeared as prescient of real events involving islamic terrorism. A friend of his, Bernard Maris, was killed in that shooting. In an interview with Antoine de Caunes after the shooting, Houellebecq stated he was unwell and had cancelled the promotional tour for Submission.[14]

Adaptations

Extension du domaine de la lutte has been adapted into a film by Philippe Harel with the same title and later adapted as a play in Danish by Jens Albinus for the Royal Danish Theatre.

The English translation of his novel Platform was adapted as a play by the theatre company Carnal Acts for the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in December 2004. A Spanish adaptation of the novel by Calixto Bieito, performed by Companyia Teatre Romea, premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival. Houellebecq and Bieito appeared together that same year in a TV program named Au cœur de la nuit / Durch die Nacht (Through the night) for the french-german channel Arte.

Along with Loo Hui Phang, Houellebecq wrote the screenplay for the film Monde extérieur (2002) by David Rault and David Warren.

Atomised has been made into a German film, Elementarteilchen, directed by Oskar Roehler, starring Moritz Bleibtreu and Franka Potente. The film premiered in 2006 at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival. It was poorly received and generally considered as an edulcorated take on the novel's bleakness and thought-provoking ideas.

The film La Possibilité d'une île, directed by Houellebecq himself and based on the novel, premiered in France on 10 September 2008. It was a critical and commercial failure, sometimes even considered as one of the worst films ever made in France, alongside Bernard Henri Levy's Le Jour et la Nuit, although some authors found him intriguing and recognized redeeming qualities.

American rock singer and "godfather of punk" Iggy Pop released in 2009 the unusually quiet album Préliminaires, which he described as influenced by his reading of Michel Houellebecq's novel The Possibility of an Island (one track even consists in the singer merely reading a passage from the book). The author considered it a great honour, as he was himself deeply affected as a teenager by Iggy Pop's music with The Stooges,[15] even going so far as to say that he was, for once, "completely happy".

In 2016 he participated, together with Iggy Pop and several others, in Erik Lieshout's documentary To Stay Alive: A Method.

Criticisms

Literary critics have labeled Michel Houellebecq's novels "vulgar", "pamphlet literature" and "pornography"; he has been accused of obscenity, racism, misogyny and islamophobia.[15][16] His works, particularly Atomised, have received high praise from the French literary intelligentsia, with generally positive international critical response, though there have been notably poor reviews in The New York Times by Michiko Kakutani and Anthony Quinn, Perry Anderson,[17] as well as mixed reviews from The Wall Street Journal.[18] However, on the other end, without ignoring the book's grotesqueries, Lorin Stein from Salon, later editor of The Paris Review, made a spirited defense:

Houellebecq may despair of love in a free market, but he takes love more seriously, as an artistic problem and a fact about the world, than most polite novelists would dare to do; when he brings his sweeping indignation to bear on one memory, one moment when things seemed about to turn out all right for his characters, and didn’t, his compassion can blow you away.[19]

Ten years later, Houllebecq responded to critical reviews:

First of all, they hate me more than I hate them. What I do reproach them for isn’t bad reviews. It is that they talk about things having nothing to do with my books—my mother or my tax exile—and that they caricature me so that I’ve become a symbol of so many unpleasant things—cynicism, nihilism, misogyny. People have stopped reading my books because they’ve already got their idea about me. To some degree of course, that’s true for everyone. After two or three novels, a writer can’t expect to be read. The critics have made up their minds.[15]

Houellebecq has been accused of putting on polemical stunts for the media. The author's statements in interviews and from his novels have led to accusations of him being anti-islamic. In 2002, Houellebecq faced trial on charges of racial hatred after calling Islam "the dumbest religion" in an interview about his book Platform published in the literary magazine Lire. He told a court in Paris that his words had been twisted, saying: "I have never displayed the least contempt for Muslims [but] I have as much contempt as ever for Islam".[20] The court acquitted him.[21] He was sued by a civil-rights group for hate speech and won on the grounds of freedom of expression.[15]

Bibliography

Novels

Other books

  • H. P. Lovecraft: Contre le monde, contre la vie (1991, trans. as H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Dorna Khazeni, introduction by Stephen King, 2005), an analysis of the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft.
  • Rester vivant, méthode, La Différence (1991)
  • La Poursuite du bonheur, poèmes, La Différence (1992)
  • Le Sens du combat, poèmes, Flammarion (1996)[22]
  • Interventions, recueil d'essais, Flammarion (1998)
  • Renaissance, poèmes, Flammarion (1999)
  • Lanzarote (2000, trans. by Frank Wynne, 2002)
  • Ennemis publics (an exchange by e-mail between Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy), Flammarion (2008, transl. as Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World, Random House, 2011, paperback, 320 pages, ISBN 0-8129-8078-6)
  • Configuration du dernier rivage, poèmes, Flammarion (2013)
  • En présence de Schopenhauer, L'Herne (2017)

Articles

  • "Description d'une lassitude" (2002) in Houelle 10, Paris.
  • "Je crois peu en la liberté – Entretien" (1998) in Revue Perpendiculaire 11, Paris: Flammarion, p. 4–23.
  • "L'homme de gauche est mal parti" (2003) in Le Figaro 6/1/03, p. 1, 13.
  • "La question pédophile: Réponse" (1997) in L'Infini 59, Paris: Gallimard, pp. 96–98.
  • "La privatisation du monde" (2000) in L'Atelier du roman 23, Paris, pp. 129–34.
  • "Le haut langage" (1995) in La Quinzaine littéraire, 670; Paris; pp. 21–22.
  • "Michel Houellebecq répond à Perpendiculaire" (1998) in Le Monde 18 September 1998.
  • "Neil Young" (2000) in Michka Assayas (ed.) Dictionnaire du rock, Paris: Robert Laffont (second part of the article, co-signed with Yves Bigot who wrote the more chronological first part).
  • "Préface" in Tomi Ungerer (2001) Erotoscope, Paris: Éditions Taschen.
  • "Préface: L'Humanité, second stade" (1998) in Valérie Solanas, Scum Manifesto, Paris: Éditions Mille et une nuits, pp. 63–69.
  • "Préface: Préliminaires au positivisme" (2003) in Bourdeau, Braunstein & Petit (eds.): Auguste Comte aujourd'hui, Paris: Éditions Kimé, pp. 7–12. (Translated as "Religion for Immortals," The Utopian, December, 2010)[23]
  • "Préface: Renoncer à l'intelligence" (1991) in Rémy de Gourmont, L'Odeur des jacinthes, Paris: Orphée/La Différence, pp. 7–20.
  • "Un monde sans direction" (1996) in La Quinzaine littéraire, 700; Paris; pp. 8–9.
  • "Wilde Flucht" (2000) in Tageszeitung Berlin, 30 October 2000.
  • "En présence de Schopenhauer" (2010) in Mediapart.fr, feb. 2010 (5 parts).

Films

CDs

  • Le Sens du combat (1996) Paris: Les Poétiques de France Culture.
  • Présence humaine (2000) Paris: Tricatel.
  • Établissement d'un ciel d'alternance (2007) Paris: GRRR.

Published in collaboration

  • Judith Barry, Pascal Convert & Rainer Pfnür (eds.) (1993) Genius Loci, Paris: La Différence.
  • Catherine Breillat (ed.) (1999) Le livre du plaisir, Paris: Éditions 1.
  • (1995) Objet Perdu: fictions – Idées – Images, Paris: Lachenal et Ritter & Parc Éditions.
  • Claus Hegemann (ed.) (2000) Kapitalismus und Depression II: Glück ohne Ende, Berlin: Alexander Verlag.
  • Dominique Noguez (ed.) (2002) Balade en Seine-et-Marne: Sur les pas des écrivains, Paris: Éditions Alexandrines.
  • Thomas Ruff & Michel Houellebecq (2002) Nudes, München: Walther König.
  • Sarah Wiame (drawings) & Michel Houellebecq (poems) (1993) La Peau, Paris: Sarah Wiame.
  • Sarah Wiame (drawings) & Michel Houellebecq (poems) (1995) La Ville, Paris: Sarah Wiame.

Works on Michel Houellebecq

  • Manuel Chemineau, "Michel Houellebecq. Vive le trash!", in Wiener Zeitung, Extra (2 April 1999)
  • Thomas Steinfeld, Das Phänomen Houellebecq (2001)
  • Dominique Noguez, Houellebecq, en fait (2003)
  • Murielle Lucie Clément, Houellebecq, Sperme et sang (2003)
  • Olivier Bardolle, La Littérature à vif (Le cas Houellebecq) (2004)
  • Sabine van Wesemael (ed.), Michel Houellebecq (2004)
  • Fernando Arrabal, Houellebecq (2005)
  • Éric Naulleau, Au secours, Houellebecq revient ! (2005)
  • Jean-François Patricola, Michel Houellebecq ou la provocation permanente (2005)
  • Denis Demonpion, Houellebecq non autorisé, enquête sur un phénomène (2005)
  • Sabine van Wesemael, Michel Houellebecq, le plaisir du texte (2005)
  • Gavin Bowd (ed.), Le Monde de Houellebecq (2006)
  • Murielle Lucie Clément, Michel Houellebecq revisité (2007)
  • Murielle Lucie Clément and Sabine van Wesemael (eds.), Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe (2007)
  • Lucie Ceccaldi, L'innocente (2008)
  • Marc-Edouard Nabe, Le Vingt-Septième Livre (2009)
  • Aurélien Bellanger, Houellebecq écrivain romantique (2010)
  • James Grieve, "A Mongrel in the Path: Prose and Poetry by Michel Houellebecq", in Art & Authenticity (2010)
  • Ben Jeffery, Anti-Matter: Michel Houellebecq and Depressive Realism (2011)
  • Bernard Maris, Houellebecq économiste (2014)
  • Samuel Estier, À propos du « style » de Houellebecq. Retour sur une controverse (1998-2010), Lausanne, Archipel (2015).
  • Nicolas Mavrakis, Houellebecq. Una experiencia sensible (2016)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Houellebecq was born in 1956, but gave out his birth year to be 1958, before it was revealed by a journalist.
    Flower, Jon (2013). Historical Dictionary of French Literature. Scarecrow Press. p. 246.
    Riding, Alan (September 10, 2005). "The French Still Obsess Over Their Gloomy Novelist of Despair". The New York Times.
  2. ↑ The Sex Export the Independent on Sunday, 21 August 2005
  3. ↑ "Michel Houellebecq assure que son nouveau livre n'est pas une " provocation " En savoir plus sur". Le Monde. 4 January 2015. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  4. ↑ Angelique Chrisafis. Michel Houellebecq: ‘Am I Islamophobic? Probably, yes TheGuardian.com6, September 2015; accessed 06 November 2017
  5. ↑ "La possibilité d'une Elle". Seb the Player. 3 December 2014. Retrieved 12 February 2015.
  6. ↑ Guardian.co.uk
  7. ↑ De Gaudemar, Antoine (2 October 1997). "Retour en enfance. L'infini, La question pédophile, N°59, automne 1997, Gallimard, 143pp., 86F". Liberation. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
  8. ↑ Dupuis, Jerome (29 January 2009). "Mon voisin Houellebecq". L'Express. Retrieved 17 April 2018.
  9. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/nov/06/fiction.michelhouellebecq
  10. ↑ Kakutani, Michiko (2000-11-10). "Unsparing Case Studies Of Humanity's Vileness". New York Times. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  11. ↑ Davies, Lizzy (8 September 2010). "Houellebecq fights off claims of plagiarism in new novel". The Guardian, Main section, p. 16. Published online (7 September 2010) as "Michel Houellebecq novel ruffles literary world again". Retrieved 15 September 2010.
  12. ↑ Lichfield, John (8 September 2010). "I stole from Wikipedia but it's not plagiarism, says Houellebecq". The Independent. UK. Retrieved 15 September 2010.
  13. ↑ The telegraph
  14. ↑ The telegraph
  15. 1 2 3 4 Susannah Hunnewell (2010) 'Michel Houellebecq, The Art of Fiction No. 206' Fall 2010 The Paris Review
  16. ↑ "Michel Houellebecq Profile at the European Graduate School. Biography, bibliography, photos and video lecture". Saas-Fee, Switzerland: European Graduate School. Archived from the original on 24 February 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2011.
  17. ↑ Perry Anderson, Dégringolade, London Review of Books, September 2004.
  18. ↑ "The Elementary Particles (Atomised) by Michel Houellebecq". The Complete Review. Retrieved 31 January 2011.
  19. ↑ Stein, Lorin (23 October 2000). "What to Read in October." Salon, Published online (23 October 2000) as "What to Read in October". Retrieved 8 November 2011.
  20. ↑ "French author denies racial hatred". BBC News. 17 September 2002. Archived from the original on 23 December 2006. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  21. ↑ The Australian (10 August 2010) 'Has Mad, Bad Michel Houellebecq Come In From The Cold?' Arts Section http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/has-mad-bad-michel-houellebecq-come-in-from-the-cold/story-e6frg6so-1225911561705
  22. ↑ A selection of poems from 'La Poursuite du bonheur' and 'Le Sens du combat' has been translated into English by Robin Mackay in Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development vol. iv, Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9553087-3-4, pp.173–183.
  23. ↑ "The Utopian · Religion for Immortals". The-utopian.org. 2010-12-07. Retrieved 2014-08-02.
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