Books: The Possibility Of An Island by Michel Houellebecq

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Michel Houellebecq belongs to the most important contemporary philosophers and novel writers in France, maybe of the world. I enjoyed his book "Elementary Particles", that I read decades ago, and his novel "Submission", about the islamization of France (my review ). I am also fascinated by his novels "Serotin"  (my review ) & "Annihilation" (review). Houellebecq`s texts are precise and analytical; he performs literary autopsies - and he likes to provoke.

 "The Possibility of an Island" is the most challenging Houellebecq novel I read so far (amazon ). The plot is told in first person and follows a 40 something, who is - as usual by Houellebecq - pathetic & obnoxious, but also smart and has the gift of an analytical mind. 

The protagonist has a very successful career as a comedia  by bringing "together the commercial advantages of pornography and ultra-violence.” We learn about his professional development, his relationships with women and his experiences with an uprising bizarre sect (this is a spoiler free blog). Parts of the plot are told in a far future by distant descendants of the protagonist.

The novel is philosophical with a pessimist undertone - as usual for Houellebecq. I am not too much impressed by the plot. But what makes me reading him again and again - and makes me a fan of him - are the author`s sharp wit and his analytical & precise musings about almost anything.

 

               Incestuous Temptations 

Houellebecq portraits "the honest folk, those who work, who ensure the effective production of wealth, also those who make sacrifices for their children—in a manner that is rather comic or, if you like, pathetic (but I was, above all, a comedian); those who have neither beauty in their youth, nor ambition later, nor riches ever; but who hold on wholeheartedly, and more sincerely than anyone, to the values of beauty, youth, wealth, ambition, and sex; those who, in some kind of way, make the sauce bind".

He makes fun of the "mediocrity of the middle classes" in general and captures the "incestuous temptations of mid-career intellectuals", who are aroused by their daughters or daughters-in-law, with their bare belly buttons and thongs showing above their pants.

 

          Same Fate As The Punks

The author shows a surprisingly optimist view about the Islamization of the western world (different from his novel "Submission) and assumes that the Islamic fundamentalists, who had appeared in the 2000s, will suffer more or less the same fate as the punks! At first they had been made obsolete by the appearance of polite, gentle, and pious Muslims — a kind of equivalent of New Wave, to continue the analogy; the girls at this time still wore the veil, but it was pretty, decorated, with lace and see-through material, rather like an erotic accessory, in fact. And of course, subsequently, the phenomenon had progressively died out: the expensively built mosques were deserted, and the Arab immigrant girls were once again available in the sexual marketplace, like everyone else.

 

                      Quest For Salvation 

Houellebecq finds it amusing to observe that it’s always the enemies of freedom who find themselves, at one moment or another, most in need of it.

He makes fun of the saints, who - in their quest for salvation -, obey motives that were only partially altruistic (even though submission to the will of the Lord, which they professed, must have often been simply a convenient way of justifying to others their natural altruism), but prolonged belief in a manifestly absent divine entity provoked in them displays of idiocy incompatible in the long term with the maintenance of a technological civilization.

 

                    The One Real Pleasure

Houellebecq claims that sexual pleasure is not only superior, in refinement and violence, to all the other pleasures life had to offer; it is not only the one pleasure with which there is no collateral damage to the organism, but which on the contrary contributes to maintaining it at its highest level of vitality and strength; it was in truth the sole pleasure, the sole objective of human existence, and all other pleasures—whether associated with rich food, tobacco, alcohol, or drugs—were only derisory and desperate compensations, mini-suicides that did not have the courage to speak their name, attempts to speed up the destruction of a body that no longer had access to the one real pleasure.

I plan to read more books by him.