Book review: What is Michel Houellebecqs popularity a symptom of?

As an old animal, he pulls away to spiltan to die, miserable and broken. In his seventh novel reaches Michel Houellebecq higher than ever before in its ongoing manifestation of the white man's swan song.

Or, rather, lower – for never has his persona been so dejected, powerless and depressed as in the new novel with the clinical title ”Sérotonine”.

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him walking is just that: 10 milligrams Captorix a day, increasing to 20. The pill affects the serotoninbalansen so that the main character, 46-year-old Florent-Claude Labrousse, formerly an agronomist at the ministry of agriculture with the task to protect French products against the flood of Danish pork and the argentine apricots, get up in the morning, wash themselves, walk around and seem normal. The side effects are obesity, apathy, and impotence.

”You are about to die of boredom”, says his doctor and prescribe mobilnumren to Samantha, Tim, respectively, Alice, three of Paris's eskortflickor. Florent careless remove the patch. He knobs his Mercedes 350G, ordering lunch, open a Chablis, complaining about the society's debasement and think back on how he betrayed those he loved and ruined his life.

Houellebecq the past three decades Europe's most controversial writers and is today one of the most widely read, especially after the ”Submission” (2015) which is set in a future France in which an islamic party is voted to power and the face of sharia law and polygamy – the latter, would Houellebecq say, an ”interesting” reform.

Scenrecension: ”Submission” by Michel Houellebecq at the Göteborg city theatre

his protagonists understand that they take this with sexuality dying as a fate worse than death. Significant chunks of romantexterna devoted to male confessions on a century in relation to the females of the various species and races, which always is willing to go down on their knees. Than larger chunks devoted to philosophical reflections on why such behavior is in tune with existence because. Jubelord as the production, creation, youth, beauty, life and fertility are tied together with the plague of pornography more limited lexicon.

Houellebecq does not have much time for Freud, but often appears as his caricature. With Freud, he agrees that life because it is sexual craving. For Freud was craving riktningslöst, could be heard anyway, and life was a sublimerings and bortträngningsarbete as channeling it in socially constructive forms. For Houellebecq, however, is the desire always directed. In the ability to perform the penetration, or to make itself attractive enough to receive it, are at the root of power, social and economic status, and with dignity. In the extension of this zoology is a well-functioning society, divided by gender and gruppställning. Könsordning and power structure are two words for the same inescapable and necessary hierarchy.

Houellebecqs strong reduction is seductive. You think how to read someone that outspoken strips away civilization's junk and punkterar livslögnerna to reach the core.

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western society is cut the band with the good order, according to Florent-Claude Labrousse. Sexual liberation, the market, individualism and the welfare state has imagined us that we are free subjects that are all can seek satisfaction and happiness. In fact, the system has made us goods, isolated ”elementary particles” involved in a ”competition to death”, in which all usually all for selfish needs. And in order to divert attention from the raw management, we build illusions of equality and ethics.

So what makes a person who on the one hand, see through today's false values, on the other hand, see how the real values, rooted in good old hierarchies, swept away by such things as free trade and feminism?

the Answer to the question is Captorix, with the help of a white man can ”live for a while, or at least help to die”. On the last page sorry Florent that we allowed ourselves to be defeated by the ”illusions of freedom of the individual, the open life, the endless possibilities (...) let us be destroyed by them”. In his darkness, he turns to God, think they even understand what caused Christ to sacrifice himself. People had received all the warning signs, but not taken them seriously. He must then ”sacrificing his life for these lost? He must really be so explicit?” The answer comes on the last line: ”yes, it seems so”.

There is no shame for the aristocracy to download new blood from the bottom up, " he explains.

explicit, clear? It is one of the novel's message. Florent greets an old universitetskamrat with the gallic-sounding name is Aymeric. This stems from the ancient nobility of Normandy and live in their ancient castle, but not the farm's economy to make ends meet, therefore, that free trade, the EU jordbrukskvoter and globalisation devastates French lantkultur. Aymeric has started to guzzle, his wife has left him for a pianist in London. Left is the 300 dairy cows, dilapidated houses, poor economy, stench, loneliness, and a lot of weapons.

Florent proposes to Aymeric obtain a moldovan, laotian or cameroonian, preferably a fruitful farm girl who understands the animals. There is no shame for the aristocracy to download new blood from the bottom up, " he explains.

Aymeric has other plans. He stands at the head of a norman bondemilis that hijacks trucks with cheap irish and canadian food imports. Then block the northern France's most important vägknut with giant combine harvesters, blow up the machines and confronting police with weapons in hand. Then, the unimaginable. Before everyone's eyes shoot Aymeric head. In the skirmish that follows massakreras nine French peasants.

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the big resignation is Aymeric as a representative of the explosive reaction. Houellebecq aware of the passage of the pulse. It is one of his quality, a look that looks sharp and a pen that is of the seen produces blazing syntheses of the current situation. The other quality is his low self-censorship, the ability to disconnect the senses, which makes the text utdunsta a authentic affect the reader may recognize in himself or herself.

See you on the other hand, the novel's intellectual range and artistic boldness that is the result faltering (as well as the plot suffers from bad hooded emergency solutions). There is now a predictability in Houellebecqs conservatism that makes the books boring. After ”Submission” you find also a gammalfransk craze for the monastic life, christianity, and into his oath, between peasants and nobles, and thus an admiration for offerhandlingar.

In the reception, there are few critics who asked the question about what it really means is that the currently most praised the author in Europe, is a militant nationalist with women from the stone age and samhällsideal from the 1700s. We note that this is the case, but we do not ask what it means. We admire and applaud.

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the texts go down so motståndslöst? It is because the novels are no longer taken seriously? That Houellebecq dismissed as a poser? But when he furthermore introduces the book with an essay in Harper's Magazine affirms that Trump is one of the best presidents ever, and that France should withdraw from Nato and the EU, and when he is in the interviews declares that national unity is the only answer in a society driven to suicide by marknadsliberalism and social democracy? And so the novel, which glorifies men who go to death for this program?

It is not difficult to say what Michel Houellebecq is a symptom of. Especially in the French literature is nationalkonservativa and fascist writers staple. Houellebecq writes consciously in the tradition. But I'm not as sure what the polite or enthusiastic acceptance are symptoms of, as he is today, in a Europe where right-wing resistance movements become just as Houellebecq want them to be: explicit.