Early in Michel Houellebecq鈥檚 novel , its professor hero talks about what makes a writer worth reading: 鈥淸A]n author is above all a human being ... and whether he writes very well or very badly hardly matters 鈥� as long as he gets the books written and is, indeed, present in them. (It鈥檚 strange that something so simple, so seemingly universal, should actually be so rare 鈥�)鈥�
Few writers are more present than Houellebecq, the international literary superstar who鈥檚 one of a handful of writers who invariably jangles my nerve-ends. Trenchantly ironic about our self-centered society, his novels are barracuda-toothed provocations, idea-laced fictions filled with dodgy sex, joyless masculinity, swipes at Islam, derision toward '60s freedoms, contempt for the media elite, attacks on the EU and casual misanthropy. Houellebecq is surely the most acclaimed literary figure to have praised Donald Trump. In France, he鈥檚 routinely called a genius 鈥� or a creep.
In fact, his fiction is brainier, trickier and more stimulating than his polarizing reputation suggests. It鈥檚 not just that his novels have been eerily prophetic about what鈥檚 happening in society. He cuts to the heart of things in a way that makes most of his American counterparts look like well-schooled functionaries doodling prettily on the margins of life.
A sense of doom 鈥� social and personal 鈥� looms over his new novel, Annihilation, which the 68-year-old Houellebecq has said will be his last. Although far from his best, it鈥檚 a fascinating book tinged by mortality. You can feel this one-time bad boy crawling out of his comfort zone to do something he鈥檚 pointedly not done before: explore middle-class family life and the healing power of love.
As usual, Annihilation features a de-centered male hero. Fiftyish Paul Raison is a high-level Paris bureaucrat who鈥檚 in a sexless marriage to another bureaucrat, Prudence. Bored and vaguely disaffected 鈥� he doesn鈥檛 believe in much of anything 鈥� Paul鈥檚 going through the motions, when his world starts falling apart.
In the public sphere, there鈥檚 a series of cyberattacks designed to send seismic shocks through the existing global order. In his personal life, his father has a stroke, and Paul鈥檚 forced to engage with his family, especially the devoutly Catholic sister he鈥檚 been largely ducking for years. Even as he鈥檚 confronted by an often-byzantine medical system, he must deal with a group of anti-government radicals, and a health crisis of his own.
Although deftly translated by Shaun Whiteside, Annihilation is slow getting started and too diffuse by half 鈥� I began skipping the boring dream sequences. But Houellebecq has always had one of those narrative voices that draws you in, as in this book鈥檚 opening line: 鈥淧articularly if you鈥檙e single, some Mondays in late November or early December make you feel as if you鈥檙e in death鈥檚 waiting-room.鈥�
Houellebecq鈥檚 major works 鈥� Atomized, Platform, Submission and Serotonin 鈥� were all worshiped or reviled for their seeming cynicism. Yet beneath their dryly funny, sometimes shocking surfaces, they鈥檙e the work of a radical conservative 鈥� to borrow a description Norman Mailer used of himself. Houellebecq鈥檚 books dissect how, in our modern society, people, in particular men, feel hollowed out. 鈥淎nything can happen in life,鈥� says the hero of Platform, 鈥渆specially nothing.鈥�
No longer bound by the old religious, national and tribal belief systems, Houellebecq鈥檚 characters inhabit an atomized world whose individualism leads to the bleak consolations of technology, consumerism and the soulless sex typified by pornography. His great satire, Submission, in which Islam takes over France, was pilloried as an attack on that religion. In fact, it鈥檚 a book about a French culture so decadently anemic that it finds a kind of comfort living under the certainties of Sharia law.
Dismissive of both the Left and market-driven society, Houellebecq is such a sly and ambiguous writer that I鈥檓 not always sure when he鈥檚 kidding. I often identify with his characters, and even when I find certain pages repellent, Houellebecq challenges my perceptions. He gets me asking whether I鈥檓 in touch with my real self, or whether I鈥檝e unthinkingly donned a set of attitudes passed on by our culture.
And in Annihilation, he surprised me. After a career spent, as he puts it, 鈥渃learing away the sources of hollow optimism,鈥� he ends Paul's story with some of the tenderest pages 鈥� and tenderest sex 鈥� of his career. This is a book about discovering the ties that bind and about letting yourself be bound by them. Filled with acceptance if not serenity, it has the happiest ending you can have in a book by a writer who doesn鈥檛 believe in happiness.
Copyright 2024 NPR
