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/lit/ - Literature

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7343069 No.7343069 [Reply] [Original]

What's your favourite Houellebecq novel?

>> No.7343077

The Pisan Cantos

>> No.7343084

My diary, desu.

>> No.7343085

>>7343084
Post selfie, Michel.

>> No.7343087

The Call of Cthulhu

>> No.7343099

Ulysses

>> No.7343116

His poetry. It's pretty decent if you understand French and he's one of only a handful of modern major French authors still writing poetry.

>> No.7343304

>>7343116
Is it worthwhile in translation?

>> No.7343846

Atomised

>> No.7344207

>>7343304
Not that guy but yes. I have his collection called The Art of Struggle. It's very simple and reflects the themes in his novels. Poems are about longing and loneliness, unemployment, depression, and so on.

>> No.7344245

>>7343069
I've only read the map and the territory and I am reading Submission right now. The latter is much more structured than the former, with actual characters and a real storyline. So in that aspect, it is a much better novel, and less of an interesting essay.

>> No.7344309

>>7343846
top diagnosis of the hippie induced barren ideological landscape desu

>> No.7344416

>>7344309
That's the thing I never understand with the guy:
since when being barren ideologically is a bad thing? Is it that scarry to face the senselessness of one's existence?

>> No.7344422

The Map and the Territory, but I haven't read all of his work at this point. I have a hard time believing anything will better Map, but if it does I'm excited.

>> No.7344488

>>7344416
The greatest problem is the social disintegration that results from it.

Even if you feel that your existence is senseless it's still preferable to live in a society with a narrative that at least functions to a degree.

>> No.7344514

>>7344488
Hm, I understand the importance of social cohesion, but going back to more conservative values also entails a fair share of oppression. Notwithstanding SJW, it is not difficult to understand why no sensible women would like to go back to the fifties.
So basically, we need a new, more inclusive narrative?

>> No.7344584

>>7344514
I don't understand how these two stereotypes can be linked with virginity. Had my fair share of virgins and not virgins, and I cannot find any correlations.

>> No.7344623

>>7344514
Plenty of women would prefer being housewives.

>> No.7344698

>>7344514
You can either oppress the bricks with mortar or have them fall down freely.

I'm getting more and more sceptical about humanity's capability to invent functional narratives and freely adhere to them and I think this belief in manufacturability is one of the greatest errors of liberal thought. The establishment of stable narratives has always come about with patience and force and were applied with a good amount of coercion rather than attempted under more liberal circumstances, so that the mortar may dry before the bricks start to wiggle.

>> No.7344735

>>7343846

I will never look at middle aged woman the same way after reading that.

All I imagine is swinging dangling scrawny labia and droopy tits.

>> No.7344736

>>7344698

i don't see why being free from narratives is a bad thing. its easier now than ever before to be free to play with language and invent yourself how you want to be. interesting times, i guess we need more heroes to inspire people : show them some ways of being to open up a multitude of possibilities. people can dream again . why be so conservative with political institutions when we are progressive in so many other ways?

>> No.7344748

>>7344736
Because there are others who aren't free from naratives, you dirty westerner.

>> No.7344751

>>7344514
It's a matter of fine-tuning, not all or nothing. Enforcing societal norms will certainly cause a "fair share of oppression". The real issue is finding what "fair share of oppression" would maintain social cohesion/limit alienation while still providing sufficient freedom to maximize happiness.

>> No.7344756

>>7344736
Being free from narrative is a bad thing because most people are made miserable by anomy. There are very few Nietzschean übermensch around.

>> No.7345690

>>7344736
Because this progress is quite literally killing people. Being free from narratives is a euphemism for nihilism and nihilism turns out to be a problem for most.

>> No.7345697

i mainly like houellebecq for the edgy semi-naked ladies on his book covers
when i was younger, i'd glimpse at them and feel like they were so hardcore and never dare to pick them up
and now i am an adult and can buy them and daringly display them on my bookcase and even read the pornographic drivel inside

>> No.7345854

>>7344736
>i don't see why being free from narratives is a bad thing
>i guess we need more heroes to inspire people :

This seems like a contradiction. A hero is in itself a contained narrative, and taking inspiration from a hero is adapting to their narrative.

>> No.7346236

>>7345697
>drivel
Why?

>> No.7346281

Extension du domaine de la lutte

>> No.7346295

Never read anything by him but he sounds like a masterful troll.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/books/michel-houellebecq-casually-provocative.html?_r=0

>Prime Minister Manuel Valls denounced ["Submission"], saying: "France isn’t Michel Houellebecq. It isn’t intolerance, hate, fear."

>> No.7346302
File: 457 KB, 536x546, hon hon.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7346302

>>7346295
>yfw soumission is pro islam and anti left

>> No.7346316

Soumission
It's the future you chose, Eurokeks.

>> No.7346326

>>7346302
In the end, Soumission ends telling us, Western culture and civilization are already dead, Islam is only the natural consequence of the decadence of the West and a vulture feeding on the remnants of the putrid Europe.

>> No.7346335

>>7346302
Seems not so much pro-Islam as exploiting islamophobia's imagery and mindset of the "Impending Moslem Threat" to create a political horror story. Note that I haven't read it, I'm just going off what I've heard about it and reactions to it (how the right has taken to it like they did 1984, for example).

>> No.7346340

>>7346302
Rene Guenon saw it coming.

>> No.7346350

>>7346335
You haven't read it at all, it's obvious from your post. It has nothing to do with political horror. In fact, more than a political horror story, is just a denounce on society as a whole, like in Atomised.
In the end, it ends with a bittersweet ending, in which it is implied that Islam is better than the corrupt and morally void Western civilization.

>> No.7346374

>>7346350
>You haven't read it at all, it's obvious from your post.
Right, because that's what I said.
>Getting caught not reading while accusing others of not reading
Yikes. Awkward.

>> No.7346380

>>7346374
Just fuck off and stop discussing something you haven't even read, faggot.

>> No.7346423

>>7346335
unemployed is fixed and crime is decreased under sharia in his novel

women go back to the household and men may have many of them

>> No.7346966

>>7345854
the hero i was thinking of is nietzschean. its an ironic "narrative" , a lesson of skepticism. that kind of hero don't lead, its an invitation to find your own way in a world with no platonic ideal/god/ultimate scientific truth. we can't escape language so if you see a contradiction in there, idk, sure. i don'T think it really matter.

>> No.7347390

>>7346302
It's more like how converting to Islam because of pragmatism(you already don't have grand naratives like social justice or nazism) is a caricature compared to the conversions to Christianity in the past. Also the book is anti-capitalist you dimwit. If you actually read it you'd know that the islamic government took the economical ideas of Chesterton aka distributism.

>> No.7347436

>>7344623
>preference is the same as social expectation/obligation

>> No.7348081

>>7346335
Yes, you're going entirely by unwarranted media hysterics

>> No.7348086

Jesus, he's an ugly fucker.

>> No.7348091

>>7348086
Yes, and that's why he's so critical of women. Let's recite and reflect on a line from the song People Are Strange by The Doors.

"Women are wicked when you're unwanted."

That line says a lot about Houellebecq and his work.

>> No.7348101

>>7344735
Fookin dis m8

>> No.7348116

>>7346966
Even if you have a few who manage to find their own way in a Nietzschean sense, the masses still need a story, a narrative, an noble lie to function on.

>> No.7348870
File: 1.90 MB, 490x478, FracturedFraser.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7348870

>>7343069
Why does he intentionally try to take pictures of himself that make him look like the epitome of JUST? I feel like I've seen someone explain the reasoning behind it on here before, but it slips my mind.

>> No.7348925

Soumission is a study of the French character that exposes them as not incidental but habitual collaborateurs.

>> No.7348926

>>7348870
he is sincerty: the movement in the form of a person.

>> No.7349003

When I read Platform I had to stop four times to masturbate

>> No.7349026

Soumission was a pretty weak novel stylistically, but the message is very interesting. I've noticed Michel Houellebecq tends to just develop on the same central issue in each novel, and bringing Islam in seems like a kind of bleak conclusion.

Whatever established the idea of late 20th century malaise with no clear directive but with a real longing for one and Soumission wrapped it up by saying that since Western culture has eaten away at itself, another culture is bound to take its place. I'm not sure how much further he can go.

Favourite work is Atomised.

>> No.7349391

>>7349026
>and bringing Islam in seems like a kind of bleak conclusion.
seems like realism

>> No.7350743

>>7343069

Can't answer that, but I'm fairly certain that's a photo of Douglas Levison, SUCKA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGAQJYIRqQ

>> No.7350749

>>7348091
You're pretty retarded. He was married at 22 and has since been married again, as well as securing himself a stable base of PTAP.

>> No.7350755

Whatever

>> No.7350773

>I love reading ugly writers
>premise of his novels sound interesting. From an outside perspective he seems like a French Philip Roth
>find out he hates women because he's ugly
oh now it makes since why he's so popular here.

>> No.7350776

>>7345690
Being free from narratives is literally the life under postmodernism though

>> No.7350778

>>7346316
heh. that filter really makes these shitposts more fun to read

>> No.7350795

>>7350773
This

>> No.7350826

>>7350773
He wasn't always ugly, but smoking 4 packs of darts a day will Fuck you up

>> No.7350828

>>7350776
And it's shit.

>> No.7350987

>>7350773
By French standards he's average at least.

>> No.7352023

>>7350773
invalid, he gets tons of pussy