In his latest
novel Soumission (Submission), Michel Houellebecq has abandoned his trademark realism and acerbic satire for fantasy. This
entry is a hatchet job of the novel, which I will argue is as weird and
disconcerting as the author's latest publicity photos (see below). But my ire
is directed as much towards the novelist as towards critics who seem unable to
get a handle on the book’s sensitive subject matter and to appraise it for what
it is. In the absence of a satisfactory review, I offer my own.
Don’t get me wrong – Michel Houellebecq is not a bad writer. I wrote a MA thesis about him
when he was still the new enfant terrible on the block. Like
many millennials, I was struck and awed by his raw portrayal of our morally
bankrupt, decadent and selfish society. In my research, however, I argued that
the French literary press was way off the mark in labelling him a radical
“avant-garde.” He was an edgy realist writing tales for our times, voilà
tout. Hadn’t they read Balzac?
If you’re reading this, you probably know who Houellebecq is. He is small man with a big literary presence – by far the biggest-selling French novelist of the past decade. He emerged on the scene in the mid-1990s with Extension du domaine de la lute (translated into English as Whatever), the story of an IT technician’s disaffection and debauchery that bleakly equates sexual satisfaction with market economics. The novel, which was successful thanks to word-of-mouth reviews, established Houellebecq as a writer-to-watch.
Houellebecq - Syphilis Chic |
If you’re reading this, you probably know who Houellebecq is. He is small man with a big literary presence – by far the biggest-selling French novelist of the past decade. He emerged on the scene in the mid-1990s with Extension du domaine de la lute (translated into English as Whatever), the story of an IT technician’s disaffection and debauchery that bleakly equates sexual satisfaction with market economics. The novel, which was successful thanks to word-of-mouth reviews, established Houellebecq as a writer-to-watch.
He followed up this
success with Les Particules Élémentaires (Atomised in
English) – a thought-provoking novel that tackles cults, hippies, the
legacy of 1968 and the genetic possibility of doing away with man. His third
novel, Platform, is about a 40-year-old male who finds true love in
the midst of a sex tourism enterprise, and is in many ways his most mature and
humanistic novel. In La Possibilité d'une île (The Possibility of an
Island) he returned to the dystopian theme of cults and cryogenics,
coupled with his trademark pessimism about contemporary life in France.
La Carte et le
Territoire (The Map and the Territory), the
fictional biography of a star of the modern art world, was published in 2010.
This ambitious novel cleverly experiments with genres and reader-expectations,
ending as a detective story after a fictional character named Michel
Houellebecq is murdered. More temperate and more salubrious than previous
works, it achieved Houllebecq academic
recognition by winning the Prix Goncourt – France’s equivalent of the Man
Booker Prize.
*
Sousmission is Houellebecq’s
sixth major novel. In brief, it tells the story of François, Professor at the
Sorbonne and specialist in the nineteenth-century writer Huysmans. Indifferent
to his life and career, though not to his subject, he is swept up in a tidal
wave of extremist politics that pits the French far right against a “Republican
front” led by Ben Abbes, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. After his election,
the Islamisation of France occurs at breakneck speed, with French women wearing
the veil, men taking multiple wives and professors having to publically convert
in order to keep their positions.
In a twist of fate that
only a writer could have imagined, Soumission was published
the very same day of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.[1] The satirical newspaper even had a caricature of
Houellebecq on the front page of that day’s edition, with a caption saying that
in 2022 he would be celebrating Ramadan. Inextricably linked to the Charlie
tragedy, he fled Paris under police protection. Assuming his new book would be
his coup de grace to Mohammedists, critics readied their
knives.[2] Some of them fell straight into the trap
laid for them, hammering Houellebecq for his racism and intolerance before
opening the book.[3]
The catch is that Soumission, believe it or not, is not anti-Islam. At all. The religion is presented without irony as a utopian solution of kinds to France’s fundamental flaws, a means of filling the moral gap left by the demise of Christianity and restoring order after the disappearance of patriarchy. Houellebecq’s satirical bile is aimed almost exclusively at the effete French political classes and professors, who are more interested in microwave meals and shagging students than any form of political engagement.
Cover of Charlie Hebdo, 7 January 2015 |
The catch is that Soumission, believe it or not, is not anti-Islam. At all. The religion is presented without irony as a utopian solution of kinds to France’s fundamental flaws, a means of filling the moral gap left by the demise of Christianity and restoring order after the disappearance of patriarchy. Houellebecq’s satirical bile is aimed almost exclusively at the effete French political classes and professors, who are more interested in microwave meals and shagging students than any form of political engagement.
Taken aback by the
absence of Islamophobia in Soumission, the vast majority of literary critics in the press have reviewed the novel positively. Alex Preston for instance observes
in the Guardian that it is “both
a more subtle and less immediately scandalous satire than the brouhaha
surrounding it might suggest.”[4] If it isn’t
racist hogwash, such critics tend to conclude that it must be rather good – a
satire of Orwellian foresight and Swiftian subtlety. It isn’t, for
reasons I’ll go into here.
The problems are
manifold, but essentially boil down to this. While it is not unthinkable that
French Islam could get some form of political representation (one such party,
the UDMF, already exists), the prospect of it gaining enough mainstream support
to front a winning collation in seven years’ time is totally and utterly
unthinkable. The establishment would never allow them to progress this far,
and if ever there were a situation where France had to choose between the National Front and an Islamic-led coalition, could anyone seriously doubt that the
former would not waltz into power?
Equally preposterous is
the form of Islam adopted in France. It is an orientalised Islam that offers a
libertine paradise for Frenchmen. Those who struggled to find partners in the
old regime – pathetic men like scholars – are now patriarchal
heroes able to find wives to cook for them, keep them company and, above all,
satisfy their every sexual desire. The title of the novel, incidentally, is
foremost a reference to this. Alcohol still abounds, for some unexplained reason.
Could this male utopia exist any place on earth, other than in the warped
fantasia concocted by Michel Houellebecq? In essence, the novel’s prophecies
for 2022 are about as serious and far off the mark as Back to the
Future’s depiction of 2015.
Another problem is that
one senses early on that Houellebecq is as interested in politics as his
protagonist, who is “about as political as a bath
towel.” Houellebecq’s novels trade in the dirty and gritty, but politics,
ugh. At best it’s a spectator sport for old people. But given that the novel is
principally about just that, it is a further fail point of the novel. Incidentally,
it is remarkable that Houellebecq is able to openly satirise a generation of
French politicians – no doubt counting on the fact that a liable suit would be
too damaging to their public image.
Another criticism of the
novel is the way in which Houellebecq undertakes a potentially fascinating parallel with Huysmans. Des Esseintes, the protagonist of Huysmans’
masterpiece À rebours, embodies
the decadent idea par excellence that contentment lies in
withdrawing from society and retreating into one’s own “den of delights.” In
this work, Huysmans radically broke with Emile Zola, whose Naturalists naively
believed they could make the world a better place by exposing injustices and
promoting nice values like socialism. Des Esseintes is François’, and by
extension Houellebecq’s, alter ego – the original escapist fantasist. Yet
François chooses a different path – that of the engagé accidentel (the
“accidental activist”). It is so much less romantic than Des Esseintes’
glorious isolation, and so further exacerbates our disappointment.
The satire on university life is more credible, even if Houellebecq insists on reminding us in a rather odd end note that he has never set foot in a university. Academic fortunes are made and broken according to who they sleep with or are related to – and positions are given to people who have recycled dissertations on Rimbaud found in provincial university cupboards. The notion that French intellectuals would agree to quit without protest in exchange for Saudi petrol dollars is funny, but again, not realistic.
Des Esseintes - Houellebecq's Fantasy Alter Ego |
The satire on university life is more credible, even if Houellebecq insists on reminding us in a rather odd end note that he has never set foot in a university. Academic fortunes are made and broken according to who they sleep with or are related to – and positions are given to people who have recycled dissertations on Rimbaud found in provincial university cupboards. The notion that French intellectuals would agree to quit without protest in exchange for Saudi petrol dollars is funny, but again, not realistic.
Houellebecq’s treatment
of scholarly life becomes a little more unstuck when he pushes his outmoded and
puerile theory that “an author is above all a human being, present in his
books.” This is at odds with the mainstay of literary theory that resists any
crass equivalence between an author’s life and his work. Does Houellebecq want
us to read his novel uniquely as an expository of his own hang-ups? It is well
known that his mother converted to Islam after years as a hippy libertine. Has
he finally come to peace with her abandonment – is that what this is all about?
In the same passage, Houellebecq’s protagonist insists that “to love a book is, above all, to love
its author: we want to meet him again, we want to spend our days with him.” It
is hard to love Houellebecq (or at least to publically admit to it) – he takes
such a masochistic pleasure in infusing his own bodily decrepitude in his
character’s, dwelling on the revolting ailments at length and with glee. It was
much easier to read his nihilistic passages on sex in earlier novels. It was
also easier to stand up for him when he had something important to say.
Houellebecq’s detractors
often claim he is a media phenomenon masquerading as a maître and
this latest novel gives fodder to this point of view. Indeed, whereas each of
his previous novels explored new directions for humanity – plausible dystopias
that are exaggerated versions of present-day reality – Soumission merely
presents us with a ludicrously implausible fantasy. At its core, the novel
seems to be a response to contemporary Islamophobia and a product of
Houellebecq’s fantastical relationship with the religion, without having
anything serious to say about it. One might even allege that the spectacular
plot was conceived as a sure-fire way to garner spectacular sales.
[1] On the morning of 7 January 2015 at about
11:30 local time, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi stormed the office of Charlo
Hebdo on 7 January killing twelve people. The newspaper had caused
offence due to its controversial depictions of Muhammad.
[2] In 2002, Houellebecq was prosecuted,
albeit unsuccessfully, for saying in an interview that “Islam was the stupidest
of religions.” (“La religion la plus con,
c’est … l’islam.”)
[3] The
writer Christine Angot has said: “Submission is a novel… that dirties anyone
who reads it. It isn’t a tract but a work of graffiti: ‘shit’ to anyone who
reads it!” Fouad Laroui writes: “… Houellebecq is participating in a quasi-biological
resurgence of racism that we thought had definitively disappeared.”
[4] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/08/submission-michel-houellebecq-review-satire-islamic-france