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Topic: Michel Houellebecq

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	Review \| Platform by Michel Houellebecq
		Houellebecq's work assumes a posture of concrete self-autonomy when, in fact, the ideological call of the day is for an ever expanding understanding of "conditioned reflexes" and "action theory." But Michel Houellebecq does not seem to be easily fooled by empty chatter and morally devious motives.
		Houellebecq's central, and thus most alluring, contribution to a true understanding of this day and age is his penetrating glance into the coldly calculative condition of modern man. Ours, he argues, is a time when true creativity and originality is suffocated by ideology.
		Houellebecq's contention seems to be that in a world devoid of transcendent values, people must continuously occupy themselves with menial tasks in order not to become suffocated by their latent emptiness.
	www.januarymagazine.com /fiction/platform.html (2452 words)

	The man can't help it \| By genre \| Guardian Unlimited Books
		Michel Houellebecq's most famous novel, Atomised, dropped like a bombshell on French leftwing intellectual society, which had thought of him as one of their own.
		Houellebecq is like the man you meet at a crossroads of great contradictory currents who hasn't made up his mind which path to take and who, moreover, is not going to make up his mind.
		Houellebecq was born in 1958 in La Réunion, a French colony off the coast of east Africa, parents divorced, a half sister somewhere along the way whom he doesn't see.
	books.guardian.co.uk /departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,783583,00.html (3016 words)

	Review \| H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq
		Houellebecq's writing is lucid and unpretentious, free of theoretical poison and as objective as it is respectful of its chosen subject.
		Houellebecq's wit uncovers the delicate and often misunderstood balance that exists between an aversion to man as the source of insipid mass movements and destructive ideologies and the sanctity of the individual -- the perennial subject and fuel of literature.
		Houellebecq strengthens the core of his long essay by including portions of some of Lovecraft's letters where much is learned about the man without taking recourse in ostentatious interpretations of Lovecraft's inner being.
	www.januarymagazine.com /biography/lovecraft.html (1032 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: Atomised: Books: Michel Houellebecq,Frank Wynne (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Houellebecq obviously has a formidable intellect and, like the best French writers, manages to rail against anthropology, psychoanalysis, New Age philosophy and modern society in general without losing sight of his narrative--indeed the narrative is controlled quite beautifully, the pacing excellent, the switching from one brother's story to the other's done with a quiet grace.
		Michel's life story is presented as quasi-historical account, a biographical retrospective in which he identified as the unknowing augur of a posthuman civilization of the future.
		Houellebecq's futuristic premise is that early 21st century society undergoes a 'metaphysical mutation', entering into a Huxleyan brave new world, but one which, due to the sociological and scientific changes that have taken place since Brave New World was written, offers a genuine utopia, rather then the dystopia that Huxley envisaged.
	www.amazon.co.uk /Atomised-Michel-Houellebecq/dp/0099283360 (2003 words)

	BOOKFORUM \| apr/may 2005
		Houellebecq's tone varies between jaded bitterness and disgusted denunciation; the narrative voice in all his work, as in the work of Samuel Beckett, seems furious at itself for having begun to speak at all and, having begun, for being compelled to go on to the end.
		Houellebecq was born Michel Thomas, on the French-ruled island of Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, in 1958.
		Houellebecq, if we are to take him at his word and not think ourselves mocked by his fanciful flights, achieves a profound insight into the nature of our collective death wish, as well as our wistful hope for something to survive, even if that something is not ourselves.
	www.bookforum.com /archive/apr_05/banville.html (2874 words)

	Michel Houellebecq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Michel Houellebecq (pronounced [miʃɛl wɛlbɛk]) (real name Michel Thomas), born 26 February 1958, on the French island of Réunion is a controversial, award-winning French novelist.
		It is a romance, told mostly in the first-person by an aging male arts administrator, with many sex scenes and an approbation of prostitution and sex tourism.
		Ruff, Thomas and Houellebecq, Michel (2002) "Nudes", München: Walther König.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Michel_Houellebecq (1119 words)

	The Elementary Particles (Atomised) - Michel Houellebecq
		Houellebecq is relentless in his attack -- until, that is, the bizarre, uplifting (?) conclusion that suggests a brighter future (of sorts).
		Houellebecq's characters are grateful for a declining interest in and ability to perform sexual acts as they age, but it doesn't come soon enough for readers.
		Houellebecq's dark philosophy, culminating in "the most radical of Djerzinski's proposals" (and radical it is), is, on a theoretical level, a bit tough to take.
	www.complete-review.com /reviews/houelbqm/partelem.htm (3154 words)

	Amazon.ca: Platform: Books: Michel Houellebecq (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Michel Houellebecq’s (pronounced Wellbeck, aspirated) Platform has been reviewed and discussed so often by now that it is scarcely necessary to recapitulate the plot of this complex and troubling novel.
		Houellebecq, after all, is a poet and a very fine one, plying the customary techniques of allusion and anagoge, whose oeuvre is haunted by the ghost of Baudelaire, in particular, Le Spleen de Paris.
		Michel’s investments of emotion (such as they are), the damaging choices he tends to make, his subliminal inconsistencies, his gainful lassitude and his predictable losses are also ours, irrespective of how numbed, unloveable and alien he may strike the reader.
	www.amazon.ca /Platform-Michel-Houellebecq/dp/0375414622 (2213 words)

	Le Provocateur
		Michel Houellebecq is the most controversial French novelist in decades.
		Houellebecq answered the door in stocking feet, blinked at me with his sad brown eyes and ushered me into the living room.
		Houellebecq fell into a drunken stupor, his nodding head landing on his plate next to a smear of mayonnaise.
	partners.nytimes.com /library/magazine/home/20000910mag-houellebecq.html (2936 words)

	Michel Houellebecq H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life Reviewed by Rick Kleffel
		Houellebecq is so outrageously, brashly entertaining that he manages the very difficult feat of making you forget that Stephen King writes the introduction.
		Houellebecq, with the able help of translator Dorna Khazeni has fashioned an exegesis of Lovecraft and his work that is the equal of its subject.
		Houellebecq apprehends Lovecraft in terms of what he calls Lovecraft's "great texts", that is, the classic stories that caught our interest and corrupted us for life.
	trashotron.com /agony/reviews/2005/houellebecq-lovecraft.htm (863 words)

	BBC NEWS \| Europe \| French author denies racial hatred
		Mr Houellebecq told the court that he felt contempt - not hatred - for Islam, and that it was nonsensical to call him an "anti-Muslim racist".
		Mr Houellebecq's lawyer, Emmanuel Pierrat, argues that the case effectively re-establishes the notion of blasphemy, despite the fact that France is a secular state and has no such law.
		Mr Houellebecq, who recently won the Impac literary prize, is used to the controversy - and the attendant publicity - arising from his frank and sometimes nihilistic novels.
	news.bbc.co.uk /2/hi/world/europe/2260922.stm (590 words)

	Michel houellebecq: French novelist for our times Contemporary Review - Find Articles (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Houellebecq (pronounced Well-beck) defended himself on the grounds of freedom of expression: 'I've never shown the slightest hatred for Muslims', he told the Palais de Justice in what the French media termed 1 'Affair Houellebecq, 'but I still have the greatest contempt for Islam.
		In the event, Houellebecq was acquitted by the court, a decision hailed by the French media as a major victory against censorship.
		But Houellebecq is also truly exceptional as a great novelist in that he expresses his philosophy of life in terms of a satire of contemporary society.
	www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1650_282/ai_105744927 (895 words)

	Review: Platform by Michel Houellebecq \| By genre \| Guardian Unlimited Books
		Houellebecq's chief character, Michel, is an accountant at the ministry of culture in Paris.
		Michel persuades Valérie and her boss to convert the company's hotels in Thailand and the Caribbean to sex tourism.
		Michel is thinking about babies and learning to cook when some Muslim terrorists - young men with turbans, anyhow - blow Valérie and 116 prostitutes and their customers to pieces.
	books.guardian.co.uk /reviews/generalfiction/0,6121,786807,00.html (1012 words)

	Michel Houellebecq
		Houellebecq rides roughshod over the justification that the clubgoers who are shackled or have hooks inserted into their scrotums are consenting adults.
		Houellebecq, en fait - the first book-length study of its subject - is not a straightforward piece of literary analysis, but a jumble of articles, diary entries, letters (the two men are friends) and court documents.
		Houellebecq also has a habit of mixing written French and spoken French, two quite distinct linguistic entities: this is difficult to render in English, where good writing almost by definition reproduces the natural flow of articulate speech.
	www.arlindo-correia.com /houellebecq.html (9652 words)

	Ink 19 :: The Elementary Particles (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		In this, his second novel, Michel Houellebecq follows in the fine French tradition of questioning the fundamental themes that polite, civilized society uses to define and circumscribe individuals.
		Unlike those two authors, Houellebecq does not have the slaughter of war to serve as a backdrop to explore modern life; instead, in Houellebecq's work, the senselessness of life is encountered in the bedroom and barren spirituality that rules our lives.
		Michel, on the other hand, remains an asexual molecular biologist who, unable to feel any emotional solidarity with any living thing besides his mother, dreams of perfecting a genetic sequence to eliminate the desire to procreate entirely.
	www.ink19.com /issues/may2001/streaks/elementaryParticles.html (1076 words)

	R A I N T A X I o n l i n e Fall 2005 - Houellebecq on Lovecraft
		Michel Houellebecq’s novels have had a violent reception—his last, Platform, landed him in court for inciting racial hatred.
		What Houellebecq detests in refried hippies and the veiled, violent inhabitants of Parisian suburbs is the same thing Lovecraft found in the Jazz Age flappers and multi-colored immigrants crowding the streets of Brooklyn.
		Houellebecq doesn’t achieve the parallel (and infinitely expanding) world of Lovecraft, but their methods (exposed in a wonderful stretch of Houellebecq’s Lovecraft entitled “Technical Assault”) are the same.
	www.raintaxi.com /online/2005fall/houellebecq.shtml (696 words)

	Amazon.fr : The Elementary Particles: Livres en anglais: Michel Houellebecq,Frank Wynne (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Meanwhile, Michel (whose story is told in counterpoint) is so emotionally remote that he is unable to kiss his first girlfriend, the astonishingly beautiful Annabelle.
		However, as Houellebecq puts it, "In the midst of the suicide of the West, it was clear that they had no chance." Once death cheats both Bruno and Michel of happiness, Michel develops the basis for eliminating sex by cloning humans.
		Houellebecq is disgusted with liberal society, but his self-importance and humorlessness overwhelm his characters and finally will tax readers' patience.
	www.amazon.fr /Elementary-Particles-Michel-Houellebecq/dp/0375727019 (821 words)

	Houellebecq, Michel \| Authors \| Guardian Unlimited Books
		Graphic and lucid in style, Houellebecq tackles the dark side of the late-20th century: the descent of the west into an orgy of consumerism; the decline of Christianity; the destructive fallout of the swinging 60s.
		Houellebecq's favourite book is The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann's philosophical novel set in an asylum.
		Houellebecq has recorded a CD of his poetry, Presence Humaine (Tricatel Records).
	books.guardian.co.uk /authors/author/0,5917,-183,00.html (356 words)

	The Richmond Review, Book Review, Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
		Houellebecq has fuelled this putative 'debate' with a series of interviews in which he blames the 'suicide of the West' variously on global capitalism, new age flummery, contraception, gays, fls and women over forty.
		While Michel withdraws from this freedom into a successful scientific career accompanied by a sclerotic emotional life, Bruno is condemned to seek fulfillment in the only way that society offers him: through sex, a route for which, given the frailties of his body and personality, he is singularly ill equipped.
		The grand transformation for which Michel's research has been preparing is nothing less than humanity's final, definitive and suicidal act: having killed off God in the scientific revolution and having done away with society in the sexual revolution, man now cedes his domination of the world to his replacement, a new and infinitely happier species.
	www.richmondreview.co.uk /books/atomised.html (825 words)

	Books on NRO Weekend
		Michel takes up with his childhood crush, whom he was too timid to romance as boy; Bruno meets a fellow libertine at a sex camp.
		Houellebecq, who apparently has an "open marriage," may be an odd defender of the traditional family, but his work implies nothing else.
		Houellebecq wraps the whole production up with a sort of thumbnail history of human society after Michel, disgusted with the venality of the world, disappears into rural Ireland to conduct his pioneering research in genetics.
	www.nationalreview.com /weekend/books/books-goldmanprint112300.html (1215 words)

	A platform for closed minds \| Review \| Guardian Unlimited Books
		It is not Houellebecq, but their assault upon the writer, that runs the risk of creating that backlash in these sensitive times.
		Michel Houellebecq's reputation has been damaged, and his Islamic adversaries have shown themselves, yet again, to be opponents of the rough-and-tumble world of free speech.
		Houellebecq's law-yers argued with considerable force that were the judgment to go against their client, the law of blasphemy would have effectively been reintroduced.
	books.guardian.co.uk /review/story/0,12084,799748,00.html (906 words)

	Amazon.com: Whatever: Books: Michel Houellebecq (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Houellebecq's narrator/central character is an unhappy man who feels contempt for women, love, society, technology, his job, himself, etc. He has an acerbic wit that, at times, is amusing, but it's a bitter sort of humor.
		Houellebecq's major thesis is that in the aftermath of the cold war, and the triumph of capitalism, the same cutthroat comepetition that has left behind so many economically has crept into social life to the extent that some get screwed, and others get screwed.
		Michel Houellebecq's debut "Whatever" (EXTENSION DU DOMAINE DE LA LUTTE) may not be as great as his latest works, as "Plataform" and "The Elementary Particles", but it already displays the budding talent of a major writer.
	www.amazon.com /Whatever-Michel-Houellebecq/dp/1852425849 (2216 words)

	LA Weekly - LâÃtranger in a Strange Land (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Houellebecq was unwilling to discuss it, saying only that he wasnât convinced of âthe opposition between human dignity and cloning,â pointing to twins as a natural manifestation of the phenomenon.
		Houellebecqâs novels are notorious for their explicit sex scenes and lovingly detailed descriptions of threesomes and orgies, most of which, we are led to believe, are based on the authorâs own experiences.
		Houellebecq, who believes that shopping is an overlooked literary subject, had wandered up and down the aisles for almost half an hour, gazing at bottles of algae and tubs of protein powder like an anthropologist studying the artifacts of an extinct tribe.
	www.laweekly.com /ink/05/31/features-bernhard.php (4101 words)

	Platform - Michel Houellebecq
		J. Michel Houellebecq's new novel (Knopf, 2003; translated from the French by Frank Wynne) is one part Beckett--minus the master existentialist's compassion--two parts porn and three parts satire.
		Michel Renault may be dismissed by many as adolescent with his sexual preoccupation, along perhaps with much of the book's satire.
		Michel is either a symptom or a freak, readers will have to decide for themselves, but Houellebecq will make us squirm whenever he can.
	www.freewilliamsburg.com /july_2003/platform.html (1329 words)

	BBC NEWS \| Entertainment \| French author cleared of race hate
		French writer Michel Houellebecq has been cleared of inciting racial hatred by saying Islam was "the stupidest religion".
		Houellebecq, who won the Impac literary prize in May, could have faced up to 18 months in jail or a 70,000 euro (£44,000) fine if found guilty.
		The court ruled that although the author's comments were "without a doubt characterised by neither a particularly noble outlook nor by the subtlety of their phrasing," they did not constitute a punishable offence.
	news.bbc.co.uk /2/hi/entertainment/2349879.stm (517 words)

	Bold Type: Excerpt by Michel Houellebecq
		Annabelle was calmly unfolding her tent; sitting on a tree stump, toying with the straps on his backpack, Michel seemed miles away.
		Michel declined, his gesture immeasurably slow, like some prehistoric animal recently roused.
		Excerpted from The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq.
	www.randomhouse.com /boldtype/1200/houellebecq/excerpt.html (1775 words)

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