Michel Houellebecq…

I don’t know how I’d feel about him or The Elementary Particles were I not currently witnessing his ideas playing out in the contemporary political forum with Incels, The Alt-Right etc. It’s hard to do what reviewers are doing, detaching themselves from the truly abhorrent ideas to critique the quality of the writing. I’m not getting paid to do that though so I can just say that it’s a well written treatise on ugliness. It’s a crabby old man, crabby before his time perhaps, writing an extended lament on modern times, post-modernism, the Sexual Revolution etc.

As a novel it’s rather a shitshow, and yes, having read quite a few novels I do feel qualified to say that. There are long pauses where he sets the stage for his characters with broad, windy, pseudo-historical generalizations about people moving away from the church and “traditional” mores and values. About cultural integrity being undermined by immigration. About nonsense… Even were the ideas not trash, why not just describe this in the narrative rather than stepping outside the narration to present a version of history that is, at best, stilted?

Where does Elementary Particles work? Houllebecq does a really good job of presenting readers with a cast of very real, identifiable, if not relatable characters. You know people like them in your life. You may have lived out some of their drama and tragedy. They are stunning in their accuracy. They are flawed. They are ugly. They are perverse. Were they not set against such a socio-politically biased backdrop they might actually be the foundation (the elementary particles, if you will) of a good novel.

Don’t get it twisted either. It’s not merely a question of my disagreement with the political premises in the book. It’s the way they are put forth as immutable truth. The characters would work without the author sitting in the background crabbing out on contemporary society. He could present the ideas through the characters. Instead he just carries on like the shitty uncle you hate every Thanksgiving Day and try to forget for the rest of the year. It gives the book a sour smell, like a bathrobe that’s gone too long between laundries.

I mean, lamenting that less attractive men have to compete for the very best looking women… lamenting about that as an injustice… it’s simply not a good look. When you have ideas like that in what’s supposed to be a novel and the pseudo-intelligentsia in the media are calling the ideas “bold” or whatnot, and calling the author “misunderstood” then well… fuck you. You’re trying way too hard. For any of it’s strengths, and there are a few, Elementary Particles is not a good novel. It’s a fraud in that respect. It seems more of a vehicle for bitter, dull ideas. Houellebecq just comes across as a loser who has externalized the blame for any of his failures and managed to make a career of externalizing his blame. Granted, I’ve read the one book and he has others, but I watched enough interviews to see that he has a running theme of externalizing blame. On women. On ethnic and religious minorities. On the world in general. He’s a right cunt. I think I’ll end with that, except to say that there are still writers who might want to read this just to get an idea of just how deep they should be going in creating characters to populate their novels… and how not to create a backdrop for their novels.