Author:Michel Houellebecq
Depending on which reviews you read, Michel Houellebecq is either a novelist of ideas and an original thinker, or he’s a blowhard contrarian and polemicist. I know which side of the fence I’m on.
(read more in comments)
Length of Read:Medium
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
Houllebecq writes good speculative fiction. The fact that it has the power to upset some people says rather a lot about the prevailing intellectual orthodoxy.
One thing you’ve learned
That the future might look a lot like the past.
Splendidly contemptuous of current intellectual and political orthodoxies, his latest novel –’Submission’- got my vote for the most interesting read of 2015. It explores one of his big themes, namely that the west is in the process of committing suicide. Ostensibly outlining the process through which France will become an Islamic state, ‘Submission’ argues not only that atheistic humanism is doomed, but that western liberal culture will eventually be viewed by historians as a brief experiment, an interlude between one mighty religious civilization and another.
Set in 2022, the story is told by Francois, a middle-aged professor of literature at the Sorbonne. He is an expert on the work of the 19th century novelist J. K. Huysmans, whose conversion to Catholicism transformed what had been a dissolute life. Like his hero, Francois is in a state somewhere beyond disillusionment, believing not only that he can’t teach, but that the academic study of literature is pointless anyway. Apolitical and unambitious, he daydreams about which students he might have sex with or what he’ll have for dinner while watching TV every night.
In the run-up to the French presidential election, people are worried and tense. There is violence on the streets, but a media black-out is preventing the mainstream outlets from reporting the extent of the troubles. This state of denial extends to polite society; Francois attends a cocktail party and, when people hear gunfire in the distance, they pretend not to notice and make various excuses to leave. Expecting an outbreak of anarchy, Francois flees Paris to spend some time at the monastery where his hero Huysmans had contemplated a return to the Catholic faith.
After a period of violence and instability, the delayed election eventually sees the socialists and the centre-right UMP form a coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood in order to prevent Marine le Pen’s National Front from taking power. The new president is Mohammed Ben Abbes, a moderate and charismatic figure who is as far removed from our notion of radical Islam as it is possible to get. An intelligent and ambitious president, he envisages an expansion of the European Union that will re-focus on the south of the continent, as well as welcoming modern North African states into the fold. He passes a series of laws to support and strengthen the traditional family unit and is content to surrender some government departments to his coalition partners in return for the appointment of Muslims to key positions in education. Ben Abbes understands that, in any battle for cultural supremacy, birth rates and education are crucial. The future -to coin Mark Steyn’s phrase- will belong to those who turn up for it.
By the time Francois returns to Paris, the new regime at the Sorbonne -supported by Saudi money- has removed females from the staff register and is in the process of enticing the males to convert to Islam with the promise of enormous salaries and enhanced status. For all of the possible arguments about the merits and demerits of conflicting ideologies, the decision Francois makes boils down to the granting of a few perks; the offer of a well-paid job and polygamous status is enough to persuade him to convert and grab his “second chance at a new life”.
‘Submission’ does not so much describe the triumph of Islam, as outline the inevitability of the west’s decay and surrender. Houellebecq presents the transformation not as an apocalyptic event, but as an inevitable and gradual movement, one which finds favour among many non-Muslim religionists and social conservatives. There is no high drama involved; in typically Houellebecqian fashion, things just happen because the tide drifts that way.
Some folk claim that he is just another purveyor of the apocalypse-du-jour, but in outlining the reasons why religious belief and socially conservative notions of societal hierarchy will outlast atheistic humanism, Houellebecq has expressed an idea that we ought to take seriously: namely, that belief in something will generally trump belief in nothing.
Great review. Have been meaning to read this.
I think Chuck D put it best; “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”.
I’d have been tempted to read this book if your post hadn’t consisted mostly of a plot summary before you got to, presumably, the argument you wished to make in the first place, that “religious belief and socially conservative notions of societal hierarchy will outlast atheistic humanism”. Don’t these phrases simply mean some form of insidious patriarchal hegemony, rather than a “belief in nothing”? Surely atheistic humanism, on the other hand, holds out a hope that Thomas Paine and enlightened others didn’t think and write in vain?
I wasn’t aware of making any particular argument, other than that Houellebecq has written an interesting book which lays out a credible scenario for the demise of western liberal culture. I’m very much in favour of western liberal culture, but can see that his arguments about belief and social conservativism make sense.
Sorry if my synopsis spolied it for you, but the book has been out for almost a year. It has already had quite a lot of media coverage. I wrote the review because I re-read it over the holidays and it impressed me more second time around.
‘Spolied’ is even worse than spoiled, obviously 😉
Will be having a look at this – thanks, read a few reviews of it last year but just never got round to it.
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Sorry, just checking I could post OK before labouring intensively over a comment that will never be. That seems to have been fixed now. Thanks admin.
Have read two of his other works – Atomised and The Possibility Of An Island. Both pessimistic depictions of the near future that are essentially critiques of present times. My sense of the author, from reading them, was of someone who rather revels gleefully in his negative portrayals. He’s a provocateur, who knows what to write to get noticed and cause a stir, and thereby sell lots of books. I enjoyed both titles well enough while having some reservations. Been meaning to get around to this one. There are those on the right who seem to want to champion Submission as some kind of affirmation of the wisdon of their own doom-mongering, forgetting perhaps that it is only a work of the imagination, and a bit of a game, though I probably should read it before commenting further.
I really liked Atomised and found it very moving by the end – if very horrible in parts. Gratuitously horrible, really.
I didn’t get on with The Possibility of an Island at all.
Houellebecq strikes me as being essentially the fiction-writing version of Charlie Hebdo: I’m glad he exists, but I’ve not much interest in reading him. Like DF says above, I have a nagging suspicion that he’s more interested in being outrageous and heterodox than in telling a great story. There’s a place for that, but it’s not really my thing.
Plus he really is Sid the Sexist.