/lit/ - Literature

>>19784515
I genuinely think that people spamming Houellebecq on this board read ONLY Houellebecq.
He's a good author but you need to stop your mono-focus on him.

La carte et le territoire
loved it, especially the part where he kills himself in a murder.

>>19784515
>Michel Houellebecq novel did you like the most
Atomized
>why?
because of the blacked cuck scene and the bbc rant

>>19784515
His newest one. Dont know what its named in english. Rushed through it in 3 days.

Houellebecq progressed in his ways.
His old books were all good to great but they were all like >muh 40/50 y/o man has no sex and love in his life and is sad because of that and also of the fact that life sucks and its all just a waitinggame for death

All of this is also on his newest book but there is more. There are very dark examples of life and reality, that life is rough by its nature, but he tells us also that its not always like this, that there is indeed hope.

Also he wrote the best characters in his new book. Paul is just a typical Houellebecq protag but Cecile and Bruno are great charakters. He also probably made the greatest /lit/ villain in a long time with Indy.

>>19784531
i like houellebecq a lot and i am reading a lot of other stuff. houellebecq is a big thing here or overall because he shows realities in his novels that are true but this truth is in our modern times a scandal.

and houellebecq is one of the few interesting authors that are still alive and writing

>>19784538
>blacked cuck scene
Did I miss that? What scene?

The Possibility of an Island I think. I like the cult stuff.

The Map and the Territory is also great.

only read submission. it was ok i guess

>>19784596
correct

>>19784515
Serotonin is my most fav, but I relate to Atomised the most. Nonetheless Serotonin wins.
It had all the typical themes of his past books but they were all nicely balanced. The farmer barricade scene ending was expected but mildly surprising at the same time. I liked the relatively vague ending and the japanese gf opening act that played on comparison to protag's last love and describing his exes after the years and how they aged terribly. The german/austrian pedo and steyr mannlicher substories were also interesting. Also the focus on food and drink was fun

>>19784538
>Atomized
I liked the downfall of Annabelle and her slow descent into demoralization. Modern society takes pretty and conservative girls and completely ruins them.

>>19784741
>It had all the typical themes of his past books but they were all nicely balanced.


I agree with that and this is my problem. It felt like a best of Houellebecq without anything new. So it was nice but also a bit of a let down

>>19784770
I get your point - technically and thematically it is his most balanced book which circulates his past themes. Nothing wrong with that. If you ask about his most innovative/poignant work then I'd say it's either Atomised or Submission

>>19784551
Lol, the best selling author whose books you can pick up in airport and train terminals in France is "scandalous"
Fuck off. Flaubert wrote scandalously. Baudelaire wrote scandalously.
Houellebecq "provokes" but speaks right to what a vast majority of the audience will go and acceptable. It fuels in then some sort of narcissistic pleasure, but it sure as hell isn't scandalous.
Alain Robbe grillet was more scandalous. BECKETT for fucks sake is more scandalous.
Talking about porn, masturbation, the sadness of sex and writing meme critiques of Islam is NOT artistic avant garde, no my friend, it's the equivalent of the American standup whose entire show is dedicated to talking about how "everyone shits every day, yet we all ignore it lmao :DDDDDD"

The Map and the Territory. It's his most well-written, mature, and thoughtfully constructed work. I like a bunch of his others but this is by leaps and bounds really.

Anéantir was fucking garbage. The end was terribly disappointing.

Submission, it informed my understanding of Europe’s future. He might be wrong about the dates but what he described is inevitable.

>>19785145
Just shut up and bow to your middle east masters

>>19784531
>>19784538

definitely Whatever because the protagonist is literally me and because he predicted 20+ years ago the downfall of Western Europe and, if you live in Europe, you will see that his book is no longer a fiction, but a sad reality

>>19785086
Expand on this

>>19785909
>terrorist attacks round the world
>ted kaczinsky aficionados on steroids killing hundreds of niggers, destroying sperm banks and chink ships
>narrative about them suddenly comes to a halt with no unfolding whatsoever as governments were about to find out who could've done this
>lol no actually the book is about mouth cancer lmao k bye

>>19784744
yeah this was the really tragic and disgusting part of book, I'm convinced he included all the other edgy shit just to contrast with it and filter people into those who get superficially disgusted and those who get morally disgusted

>>19784515
I haven't read his books. Why should I?

Elementary Particles
(Because it's the only one I've read)

>>19787838
They're really good.

Bump

>>19784515
From what I've seen "Whatever" has the best prose. That becomes particulary apparent when compared to "Platform".

>>19786319
Atomized was like this as well because the tragic catharsis is ruined by a meme scifi ending that makes no sense at all

anyone here enjoy his novella Lanzarote?

>>19789803
Yes I did

>>19784538
This is in Whatever no?

>>19784959
>>r/oddlyspecific

Im interested in reading this guys books, they sound fun. The only one at my library is Submission though, but I will read it eventually.

i liked submission the most but thats probably because i love reading anything to do with politics. otherwise i think atomized was the best in terms of bringing in and exploring ideas other than 40/50 year old incels and dissatisfied whores/manwhores

>>19784533
>>19784972
agreed. The Map and the Territory's about a visual artist, which allows for some very interesting conceptual inserts, Houellebecq gets to basically create "great" works of art by writing them into the novel, and they are genuinely interesting, while simultaneously reflecting on modern art's total break from tradition, its elites' institutionalized schemery. plus the artworks are similarly charged in societal-critical terms to what he usually does with character and narrative, but taken in a purely visual and conceptual direction makes for something more expansive and abstract. the artist bangs a blonde art dealer after a phase where he reads through the western canon. then the detective-procedural takes over the last 3rd of the book and is meta-melancholic and good too.

for some reason this book's creation of artworks was sort of revelatory to me, one can simply write non-literary artworks into being as an end in itself. though this wasn't the first novel I'd read to describe many invented pieces of such.

I don't like this thread anymore. Can we please report it and let it die?

>>19784557
Maybe he is talking about the nigger student scoring all the hot teenagers the teacher wants to fuck? I don't remember anything else that coild fit desu

>>19795014
I think so too. The nigger started touching the girl once he realised that Bruno was lusting for. Not exactly a bbc cuck scene though.
The dick size thing was kind of sad too. Why would you even go to Swinger Clubs and let your girlfriend run a train with bigger guys?
The book was disgusting and very demoralizing yet quite amusing. I probably got filtered by it though.

Submission, kind of comfy desu and it made what would normally be shit sound appealing
>>19784972
Thinking of reading this one next

>>19784972
>>19784533
yep

>>19795087
>The book was disgusting and very demoralizing yet quite amusing. I probably got filtered by it though.
You didn't get filtered, that's the point of Houellebecq

>>19784515
The one with sex tourism because I self inserted in all the sex scenes and had to say are you literally me outloud quite often

I was in Rome on the 7th and saw that the italian shits already had the new book translated. When is English translation coming ffs.

>>19795943

>>19795954
It's also already translated to German.

>>19784515
Submission.

The main character was to close to myself for it not to.

Tired: reading Houellebecq for his insights about society
Wired: reading Houellebecq for his insights about dogs and Agatha Christie

>>19784533
>>19794987
This. His first novels are obviously "literally me"
but the map and the territory is my favorite wellback novel as well.

>>19789802
It makes lotta sense but only if you read between the lines all the novel.

>>19795087
>The book was disgusting and very demoralizing
The reason why 20th century and onward lit is trash, pantomiming De Sade because they cannot produce real art the same way Warhol pantomimed Duchamp.

No one will read or remember Houellebecq in 30 years.

>>19785145
For real Submission made me like Islam more lol the Islamic France is way better than real France in the novel

>>19796175
except Islamic france will be populated with inbred 85 IQ brown people and will cease to produce any art or culture

>>19796175
That's the whole point of the book, anon.

>>19796146
Try making art from the disgusting modern world we live in. You probably can't.