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Michel Houellebecq Réunion 26 Feb. 1958 • French prose writer full text search: the ledge - flash version* *	‘The Left has been leading the ideological debate for years. And the results haven’t been brilliant,’ said Michel Houellebecq in an interview about his novel Platform (2001). For the past few years, the self-proclaimed rightwing intellectual has done everything possible to dominate the social debate in France – and has been extraordinarily successful. Since the resounding success of his second novel, Atomised, in which he makes short shrift of 1960’s leftist radicalism, he has grown into a cult figure who likes nothing better than to kick sacred cows and pinch sore spots. ‘Hit ‘em where it hurts’ is his motto, and predictably, this has led to wrangles with May 68-ers, feminists, the ecology movement, and militant Islam. According to Houellebecq, who trained as a biologist, the modern novel should contain ‘everything’: from philosophical theories to pure emotion and from scientific debates to literary criticism. The idea itself isn’t new – the German romanticist Novalis first came up with it in the 18th century – but there are few modern authors who actually put it into practice. Unimpeded by his academic, somewhat wooden style, Houellebecq, in his first novel Whatever, decries the modern consumer society, in which sexual desire has become the source of all hate and sorrow. In Platform, he disguises a plea for prostitution and foreign aid as the story of a man who opens a travel agency for sex tourism. And in Atomised,	he shows how beneficial genetic manipulation can be in solving the (sexual) problems of humankind. However indebted Houellebecq may feel to writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Aldous Huxley, Atomised isn’t really science fiction. The novel begins in the year 2079, when a human clone sets down the tragicomic adventures of two half-brothers, victims of the sexual confusion of the late 20th century: the teacher and failed writer, Bruno, and the molecular biologist, Michel. Both men – like the writer Houellebecq, incidentally – have been raised by their grandmother, because they hampered the ‘personal freedom’ of their parents: as a result, both are doomed to emotional and social failure. Bruno’s sexual Werdegang, in particular, gives Houellebecq the freedom to rail against camping orgies and penetration parties, in the wake of Free Love. Atomised is, at times, a hilarious book, but the moral is dead serious. The individualism and sexual freedom of the sixties and seventies has resulted in the disintegration of society, and our only hope is technological progress, which will enable man to reproduce without any inference from sex. This plea for human cloning breaks the greatest taboo of our time – no doubt to the immense satisfaction of the writer himself. You’re either an auteur provocateur, or you’re not.
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ON MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ'S BOOKSHELF Letters St. Paul, The Letters of St. Paul: according to Houellebecq ‘a nervous author’, as insolent and aggressive as he is. The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte Auguste Comte, 1898 The positivism of French sociologist Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who believed that scientific progress would lead to a better society. Demons Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky, 1871-1872 The ‘Leftist intelligentsia’ of 19th-century Russia is cut down to size. The Call of Cthulhu, and Other Weird Stories H.P. Lovecraft, 2002 The fantastic stories (influenced by Edgar Allen Poe) of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). Brave New World Aldous Huxley, 1932 The science fiction of Aldous Huxley, especially Brave New World (1932), about a genetic ‘paradise’. American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis, 1991 Shocking satire on the consumer society. Hymns to the Night Novalis, 1800	BOOKS BY MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ: Atomised 1998 Cultural-critical ‘novel of ideas’, in which a human clone looks back on the excesses of the sexual revolution in the 60’s and 70’s. (In the US, this novel is published as The Elementary Particles)	WHAT TO READ AFTER ATOMISED? ANGER AND (SEXUAL) FRUSTRATION Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1932 Monologue of a disillusioned man. The Piano Teacher Elfriede Jelinek, 1983 Joyless sado-masochism in Vienna. Europa Tim Parks, 1997 On a bus, en route to a protest march, English teacher vents his feelings. KINDRED (FRENCH) SPIRITS Baise Moi / Rape Me Virginie Despentes, 1995 Two aggrieved women get (sexual) revenge on ‘the Male’. [Les belles âmes] Lydie Salvayre, 2000 Middle-class tourists take a bus trip through the poorest neighborhoods in Europe. ₤ 9.99 Frédéric Beigbeder, 2000 Amoral adman spews gall. SO LONG TO THE 60'S AND 70'S The World According to Garp John Irving, 1978 The sexual revolution devours her children. [Onder professoren] Willem Frederik Hermans, 1975 The History Man Malcolm Bradbury, 1975 Modern academic imposes his lust on the world. About a Boy Nick Hornby, 1998 Hippie-ideals breed maladjusted children. THE IDEAL (?) FUTURE Looking Backward, 2000-1887 Edward Bellamy, 1888 A 19th-century man finds social utopia in the year 2000. The Time Machine H.G. Wells, 1895 Class society of the distant future only seems perfect.
	[Rester vivant] 1991 A (cynical) course on 'How to Become a Successful Poet'
	[Extension du domaine de la lutte] 1994 Two systems analists in search of sex in the consumer society.
	[Lanzarote] 2000 Novel about Canary island sketches tourism as exponent of human misery
	Platform 2001 Bureaucrat, together with the woman he loves, sets up agency for sexual tourism, but his hopes for a better life are blown to bits in a (Muslim) terrorist attack.
	Possibility of an Island 2005 A professional comic's empty career is one of the strands in this science fiction story about the meaning of life .
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