(Drivebycuriosity) - I am fan of Michel Houellebecq because of his sharp wit and his analytical & precise musings about almost anything. He belongs to the most important contemporary philosophers and novel writers in France, maybe of the world.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.
Recently I finished his highly complex novel "The Map and the Territory" ( amazon). The plot follows Jen, an artist who became famous with photographs of Michelin Maps and painted fictional portraits of celebs, like "Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Dividing Up the Art Market".
Jen met during his steep career a lot of interesting people and had astonishing experiences, what inspires Houellebecq to cover a great number of topics, including the world of art, ageing, cancer, crime, relationships, sex, assisted suicide, French media business etc. etc.. The author even blended himself into the plot, but mockingly, not the real Houellebecq. And there is also a surprising and elaborated crime mystery with some gore and horror.
I really would like to see the paintings imagined and elaborately described by Houellebecq - like "Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology".
At The End Of The Day
For those who don`t plan the read the book any time soon I display here some of Houldebeq`s aphorism:
He explains, “what made communism fail: as soon as you got rid of the financial incentive, people stopped working, they sabotaged their task, absenteeism grew in enormous proportions. Communism never was able to ensure the production and distribution of the most elementary goods".
He imagines Bill Gaites` “faith in capitalism, in the mysterious “invisible hand”; his absolute, unshakable conviction that whatever the vicissitudes and apparent counter-examples, the market, at the end of the day, is always right, and that the good of the market is always identical to the general good”.
About art: "The question of beauty is secondary in painting: the great painters of the past were considered such when they had developed a worldview that was both coherent and innovative, which means that they always painted in the same way, using the same methods and operating procedures to transform the objects of the world into pictorial ones, in a manner that was specific to them and had never been used before".
The Least Bad
Houellebecq describes the so-called top photographers: "They just placed themselves in front of you and switched on the motor of their camera to take hundreds of random snapshots while chuckling, and later chose the least bad of the lot; that’s how they proceeded, without exception".
The author does not like Picasso: "Picasso’s
portrait of Dora Maar, who gives a fuck about that? Anyway, Picasso’s
ugly, and he paints a hideously deformed world because his soul is
hideous, and that’s all you can say about Picasso. He has nothing to
contribute, and with him there’s no light, no innovation in the
organization of colors or forms. I mean, in Picasso’s work there’s
absolutely nothing that deserves attention, just an extreme stupidity
and a priapic daubing that might attract a few sixty somethings with big
bank accounts".
Concentration-Camp-Like Experience
About air traffic: "From
the early 1970s, with the first Palestinian terrorist attacks—later
continued, in a more spectacular and professional manner, by those of
Al-Qaeda—air travel had become an infantilizing and
concentration-camp-like experience you prayed would be over as soon as
possible".
About botanics: "Flowers are only sexual organs, brightly colored
vaginas decorating the surface of the world, open to the lubricity of
insects".
Virile Brute
About relationships between men and women: "A small and slim kind not generally sought out by women. The image of the virile brute who is good in bed had been coming back in force recently, and it was indeed much more than a simple change of fashion; it was the return to the fundamentals of nature, of sexual attraction in its most elemental and brutal form".
About Paris: "Springtime
in Paris is often simply a continuation of winter—rainy, cold, muddy,
and dirty. Summer there is unpleasant more often than not: the city is
noisy and dusty; the hot seasons never last long and end after two or
three days with a storm, followed by a sharp drop in temperature. It is
only in autumn that Paris is truly a pleasant city, offering short sunny
days, where the dry and clear air leaves an invigorating sensation of
freshness".
About Ageing: People’s voices never change, no more than the expressions in their eyes. Amid the generalized physical collapse that is old age, the voice and the eyes bear painfully indisputable witness to the persistence of character, aspirations, and desires, everything that constitutes a human personality.
About
cars: Audis characterize themselves by a particularly high level of
finishing which can be rivaled only, according to Auto-Journal, by
certain Lexus models.
Mixture Of Deceit & Laziness
About Lawyers: "That mixture of deceit and laziness which sums
up the professional behavior of a lawyer, and most particularly of a
lawyer specializing in divorce.
About criminality: The fear of the gendarme, he realized, was undoubtedly the true basis of human society,
Last but not least: The
protagonist did not like children: "Jen didn’t like their natural and
systematic selfishness, their innate ignorance of the law, their utter
immorality that required an exhausting and almost always fruitless
education"
I plan to read more books by him
P.S. On the top you can see Michelin`s relief wall map: Annecy & Mont Blanc.
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