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adam_mcphee 's review for:
Submission
by Michel Houellebecq
Houellebecq comes to terms with Islam and his own mortality.
I kept thinking about Atwood's talking point that writing is an inherently optimistic act. It makes sense: a person writes so that later on someone can read. But I'm not sure Houellebecq agrees.
In Submission, the rise of a Muslim to the French presidency seems to improve civil life for people like Houellebecq's academic protagonist: no more Greenpeace petitioners, no more women's fashion shops (except for lingerie stores), no more women in the workplace brings an end to unemployment, petrodollar enhanced paycheques and pensions, a return to the patriarchy, strengthening of the family unit and for Houellebecq the ultimate benefit: arranged polygamous marriages.
There are only three downsides for Francoise: he can no longer ogle women in the street, his favourite kosher deli meats have disappeared, and the intellectual freedom enjoyed by the traditionally ignored academic community is being curtailed.
It seems like Francoise is being set up to make a bargain with the devil: a prosperous society that seems set up to cater to the author's sensibilities, at the cost of ending the intellectual and academic freedoms necessary for a liberal and literate society to function. But I think there's something more going on here.
While Francoise certainly values literature above all else (consider this quote:
) he doesn't consider it possible to pass on or even deliberately share this affinity with others:
So it's actually a pretty good deal for him, especially given that he's always on about the collapse of western civilization. I forgot what my point was. I guess just that Houellebecq is funny as hell and people take him too seriously. The part about him trying to become Catholic had me laughing my balls off.
I kept thinking about Atwood's talking point that writing is an inherently optimistic act. It makes sense: a person writes so that later on someone can read. But I'm not sure Houellebecq agrees.
In Submission, the rise of a Muslim to the French presidency seems to improve civil life for people like Houellebecq's academic protagonist: no more Greenpeace petitioners, no more women's fashion shops (except for lingerie stores), no more women in the workplace brings an end to unemployment, petrodollar enhanced paycheques and pensions, a return to the patriarchy, strengthening of the family unit and for Houellebecq the ultimate benefit: arranged polygamous marriages.
There are only three downsides for Francoise: he can no longer ogle women in the street, his favourite kosher deli meats have disappeared, and the intellectual freedom enjoyed by the traditionally ignored academic community is being curtailed.
It seems like Francoise is being set up to make a bargain with the devil: a prosperous society that seems set up to cater to the author's sensibilities, at the cost of ending the intellectual and academic freedoms necessary for a liberal and literate society to function. But I think there's something more going on here.
While Francoise certainly values literature above all else (consider this quote:
Spoiler
In that time he had managed to write books that made me consider him a friend more than a hundred years later. Much, maybe too much, has been written about literature. (I know better than anyone; I’m an expert in the field). Yet the special thing about literature, the major art form of a Western civilization now ending before our very eyes, is not hard to define. Like literature, music can overwhelm you with sudden emotion, can move you to absolute sorrow or ecstasy; like literature, painting has the power to astonish, and to make you see the world through fresh eyes. But only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, it limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting, or repugnant. Only literature can grant you access to a spirit from beyond the grave–a more direct, more complete, deeper access than you’d have in conversation with a friend. Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak so openly as when we face a blank page and address an unknown reader.I’d never felt the slightest vocation for teaching—and my fifteen years as a teacher had only confirmed that initial lack of vocation. What little private tutoring I’d done, to raise my standard of living, soon convinced me that the transmission of knowledge was generally impossible, the variance of intelligence extreme, and that nothing could undo or even mitigate this basic inequality.
So it's actually a pretty good deal for him, especially given that he's always on about the collapse of western civilization. I forgot what my point was. I guess just that Houellebecq is funny as hell and people take him too seriously. The part about him trying to become Catholic had me laughing my balls off.