/lit/ - Literature

>>21720386
The actual answer is mandatory sterilization of all men that haven’t gotten laid by 18. Make if official.

>>21720386
Is this author just a horny French perv? Never read him myself, but literally everything I see about him has to do with sex. Does his stuff have a special style, interesting characters, cool themes, or an especially interesting plot? Or was this just another book?

>>21720425
>but literally everything I see about him has to do with sex

>>21720425
All french people are sex pests. Even the French will call syphilis the French disease. Every nation has it's primary erotic obsession, for the french it is sex in general, for the germans it's leather and poop, for the english it is crossdressing. Etc andsoforth.
Woolluhbeck is one of a kind writer though.

>>21720386
>incel goes on vacation
>falls in love
>she gets killed my terrorists
>he is le sad and wastes away
what's there to interpret? good book though

>>21720386
Houellebecq is a romantic who explored through his work things like hedonistic coomerism, genderless transhumanism, art and attempted religion as potential salvations to the modern western liberal nihilistic predicament but they all come up short and romantic love is the only thing that redeems life, but we are in a society where love is made if not impossible then at least very rare and hard to acquire and keep. Within the context the book is what >>21720552 said.

Love is the answer but you probably won’t get it and if you get it it will probably not last and the alternative is just sadly wasting away.

It’s just a funny book about finding love and losing it and masturbating on John Grisham novels

>>21720830
>>21720773
but what about the central focus on sex tourism? it must tie in here

>>21720773
>but they all come up short and romantic love is the only thing that redeems life, but we are in a society where love is made if not impossible then at least very rare and hard to acquire and keep
That matches my interpretation of Seratonin and his other works, so you must be right

sex tourism is good and muslims trying to stop our party are bad

>>21720867
The last 2 pages of serotonin are among the best things I have read. Lolita’s first page and these 2 are the only pages that I constantly come back to read again and again.

>>21720914
what did u think of annihilate

>>21720914
They're tough

>>21720872
based

>>21720386
>What's your interpretation of this book?
woke garbage

>>21720949
It’s released in my native language (Greek) but the translator in shit tier woman. I am waiting for the English one. I hope it blows my mind considering the time the motherfuckers take.

>>21720969
They are so fucking great. It gives form to what we all feel under the many layers of denial modernity and ourselves have Imposed on us. This paragraph that writes about these surges of love we feel that are so contrary, so foreign in our biological nature, a divine intervention, the hand of god guiding you to happiness that you crush everyday for normailty’s or logic’s shake. It changed me. I let myself feel love again.
(I assumed you are not talking about Nabokov’s prose)

>>21721128
>. I am waiting for the English one.
Is anyone doing it?
It was sypposed to be released last year.

>>21721128
It broke me the first time round, but your perspective makes it even worse. I'm gonna have to reread the book with your view in mind and I hope to get much more out of it.

>>21720386
I haven't read it yet, but I have read both Whatever and Atomized, and in neither of those books is there anything close to a 'solution' offered to the problem he essentially identifies as the "human sexuality as free market". Both of the books are really devoid of any lasting humanistic hope. I don't see why any of his other books would deviate from that, unless he somehow does a 180 on his thoughts.

The following is the wonderful final paragraph of Whatever. Of course, it's an English translation, but hopefully that means the French (which I cannot read unfortunately) is an even more beautiful piece of prose. Hopeless, fatalistic, crushing.

"I cycle still further into the forest. On the other side of that hill is the source of the River Ardeche, the map says. The fact no longer interests me; I continue nevertheless. And I no longer even know where the source is; at present, everything looks the same. The landscape is more and more gentle, amiable, joyous; my skin hurts. I am at the heart of the abyss. I feel my skin again as a frontier, and the external world as a crushing weight. The impression of separation is total; from now on I am imprisoned within myself. It will not take place, the sublime fusion; the goal of life is missed. It is two in the afternoon."

>>21720864
Well that’s one of the answers he explores that comes up short.

>>21720386
Like many thinkers of his time, he was influenced by Indian philosophy. The Hindus and Buddhists understood that what gave man continuity over countless lifetimes was not his body, or even his mind, but his platform, his karma. The platforms determine his future, not his class or the whims of God. If you want to understand houellebecq, you have to understand the Upanishads

>>21721261
I don’t even know at that point.

>>21721297
What made it worse for me was that I saw myself being the Houellebecq-ian protagonist in the making. Houellebecq more or less uses the same character in his novels, the disillusioned middle to high class white western male, “the man in search of a soul”, the man in the rat race, the materialist that one day at his 40s he can no longer hide from himself, the emptiness he sees within him and the society he belongs, the one that he thrived in is nothing more than smokes and mirrors, a hollow shell. So he begins to do something about it but he is doomed from the start. He is too damaged or life punishes him for his attempt to change.

My reading of Houellebecq is a cautionary one. It’s the harvest of our choices, the ones we make everyday, our apathy towards each other, our self denial. The pity restrictions we impose ourselves, the ones that limit the humane and the natural, your gut feeling and instincts. He showed me that our collective roadmap leads to hell on earth and I that I was lucky to read him when I was 21. I already knew or felt that there was something deeply wrong but he fleshed it out for me. You can see he writes from experience, especially in his book ‘whatever’ or a better title old be ‘the extension of the domain of struggle’.
What I got was this: don’t be afraid to live and to experience, let yourself ride the wave up and if so, ride it down too.
There is a greek series called Maestro by Papakaliatis which is fantastic. It’s the first Greek series to be acquired by Netflix and has a life affirmative spirit that shines through the 10 (I think) episodes. Especially the character of the grandmother and her relationship with one of the 2 main protagonists. Check it out too when/if you have the time.

>>21721387
It’s interesting because at least, in his own way, the protag does seem to be happy or to have stumbled on a solution of sorts by the end of platform, before the terror attack destroys his happiness and takes it away from him. The state of bliss portrayed here has a bit in common with the hedonism of Bruno from elementary particles, though it’s grounded in romantic love for a single woman with a few occasional wife swap escapades rather than aimless coomerism.

That’s what makes the sex tourism element of this book stand out— the story has a happy ending until it gets literally blown up, and I’m wondering is what he meant by this

>>21721720
I'll have to read it I guess. But Bruno iirc was, even in his happiness, deeply wounded. With his relationship with that women before she died, he expressed still a general disappointment about his life that he was able to suppress when he was with her. It's been so long since I've read Atomized, though.

>>21720386
Tl;dr of early Houellebecq:

The logic of market rationality has penetrated sexual relations due to neoliberalism and De Beauvoirist feminism leading to inequality and poverty of affection, where the old, disabled, ugly, unpleasant etc. end up being denied one of the most basic facets of the human experience. Since religion has also declined due to secularization, these characters take materialist market rationality to its conclusion and wind up auto-annihilating.

Effectively Houellebecq presents character studies of people who live wholly materialist lives

>>21721760
Love represents these characters' way out, their only means of transcendence in a secular world (it's not a coincidence that Bruno's lover is named CHRISTiane). Of course, it doesn't end up working because this transcendence doesn't end up transcending the a\ultimate horror of materialist life - death - or the lack of a promise of pleasure after death.

>>21720914
I honestly couldn't get into Serotonin, and I suppose that I blocked out those last two pages... Just reread them... What a perfect distillation of his entire corpus

>be me
>kissless virgin
>backpacking thru peru with friends
>lima has legal brothels
>friends move on
>i stay behind
>fuck a playboy tier model every morning and night for next 2 weeks
>brothels sell viagra, so some days i do 4 girls
>best 2 weeks of my life
>friends return
>hey anon what u been up to?
>just exploring the rich culture and history of the city
>they didn't suspect a thing

helped me get over my awkwardness with women. have since been able to get laid back here at home without paying for it.

anyway, i love u Marianna! I still miss u and hope u followed your dream, got out of the biz and opened your own little fashion boutique by now

i still jerk it to your sweet memory :)

>>21721720
Its saying that the happiness was not genuine, or else it would not be so easily pushed aside. It is only when he forgets himself that he feels happy, but that is also when he stops being himself, and that's no better than being dead.

>>21722445
You didn’t catch a disease? Are STDs even something to worry about, or have we been propagandized into believing?

>>21720413
Shut up dikel

I don't think that there is a solution, the world will just keep getting worse until the next world war and then who knows

>>21723156
I am a medical student. I have even in the dermatology department for 3 months (wanted to be there extra time because I want to go into dermatology later). I have never seen a straight male have any std. it’s only homosexuals and sometimes some prostitutes (you can tell both but we ask because it’s a risk factor anyway). It’s especially bad with homos because the have a lot of partners, don’t use any precautions and have intercourse in the rectum (which is not the most sanitary of places).
I am convinced that if a straight male has sex with non prostitute female (even unprotected) it is close to impossible to contract any stds.
Schizo theory: condoms=depopulation method

>>21723156
i wore a condom and didn't do any kissing. also the girls are required to get an std check every week and need to present the certificate of a clean bill of health before they are allowed to work for that week. they are probably cleaner than the average club/bar skank

>>21720413
God, you’re retarded.

>>21721720
>>21721760
Bruno was a vehicle to promote the bbc meme. He is a demoralized character

>>21724618

no he's right, incels are a dysgenic evolutionary dead end and will not be allowed in the ethnostate to pollute the aryan gene pool. into the ovens with them.

>>21722445
wholesome post
houellebecq would be proud

I've only read pic related, what should I check out next?

>>21725689
Whatever
Submission

>>21722445
Godspeed anon. And hope Mariana made it.
As Apuleius wrote: familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration. You were able to pay for it so you don't mystify it anymore. Well done dude, welcome to the club.

>>21720413
How dumb are you.