The news bombshell that Michel Houellebecq claimed he had been tricked into becoming a porn actor in his older days, and went to court to have the film stopped, was perhaps just what was missing. The man who has provoked readers since his debut as a writer has a genuine ability to direct his own reputation. I suspect this latest round is another PR push from the writer who loves to outrage. Facts about Michel Houellebecq Photo: OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI / Afp Born 1956. Trained agricultural engineer. French writer, poet and film director, known for his controversial novels. The novels often revolve around middle-aged, disillusioned men with little faith in society. Has shown an extraordinary ability to capture the spirit of the times by portraying hot topics. Has received many awards, among them the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2002 and the French Goncourt prize in 2010. Appointed a knight of the French Legion of Honor on 1 January 2019. One we love to hate Porno he already writes about in the collection of texts “Holde seg i live” from the 1990s, a selection that has now been excellently translated into Norwegian by Thomas Lundbo. The book is not long: the barely 150 pages contain both an enthusiastic foreword and a thorough afterword. In the foreword, Asle Toje writes that Michel Houellebecq fulfills Georg Brandes’ ambition that literature should put societal problems under debate. The afterword, well formulated by Jonas Bals, focuses on the author’s critique of capitalism. Bals also asks the timely question: Is Houellebecq a clear-sighted analyst who anticipates and comments on destructive aspects of society, or are his pitch-black outpourings part of the problem? The texts themselves invite such ambiguity, chock full as they are of issues that the author has circled around since the beginning. The map and the terrain This is how the first text opens: Here lies an authorship in the bud. After all, he has only used the words expansion and destruction in the title of two of his novels, the debut “Expansion of the battle zone” (1994) and the most recent one “Tilintetgjøre” (2022). Other words that recur in the writing are precisely suffering, nothingness, pain, disgusting and climax. You could not have guessed better if you had known the authorship BEFORE these lines were written. This first and most important text in the collection is a poetics, quite simply, for the new author. Here he mythologizes suffering and outsiderness as necessary prerequisites for a true artist. It is startling to see the extent to which the French grunt has followed his own theses. Fynd-ord The text is tremulously gloomy and almost consists of aphoristic statements about how the poet should behave. There is no point in seeking happiness, because it does not exist. Community is to be despised. Love exists, but is unattainable: Pessimism I can’t help but think that this is primitive and self-centred. The thoughts belong to a man who believes he has seen the light (read darkness) because he feels wronged and neglected. He protests against the European zeitgeist where the traditional gender balance has been changed, which means that love is at the mercy of market forces, like everything else in society, as he constantly writes. Society has become fragmented, people alienated. Houellebecq does not leave humanity with much hope. The pessimism gives him energy as a writer, as paradoxical as it may sound. Self-righteous Protest and revolution have been consistent features of French intellectuals. Weaknesses of the existing must be fought with a loud battle. For Houellebecq, modern man’s miseries are most often the fault of others. It testifies to a pathetic disclaimer of responsibility: Being destructive is easy – it is far more difficult to think how we can best live together with those who think differently – and find meaning in life. Giving voice to the dissatisfied Michel Houellebecq does not necessarily write on his own behalf. His strength as a writer is that he has articulated the frustration of a large group of entitled European men who feel destroyed by sexual liberation. It has – according to him – given a few men access to as many women as they want, while others get none. In addition, they feel threatened by immigrants in general and Muslims in particular. In his novels, he combines anger, sex depictions and social analysis so infamously that he also becomes funny. Quarrelsome chronicles Houellebecq is also witty in this book. Especially in the small petits towards the end, where he sprinkles in characteristics of aging Southern tourists, for example, a group he will have a lot of bad things to say about in the years to come. These texts, which are articles published in various French magazines throughout the 1990s, are far from as gloomy as the literary manifesto at the start. Several of them are visionaries: Here Houellebecq writes almost movingly about a visit to a porn fair and some small attempts at online dating. This was in the infancy of the Internet, but the author clearly draws the contours of the overwhelming electronic porn industry we know today. The collection of texts is extensive, and it is a quick read. It provides an invigorating introduction, really, to a writing that has anticipated unpleasant currents of thought in the era. And if you already know Michel Houellebecq, “Staying alive” will give you exactly the disillusioned and rude voice that has become the French rabble-rouser’s trademark over the years. news reviews Photo: Cappelen Damm Title: “Staying alive” Author: Michel Houellebecq Translator: Thomas Lundbo Genre: Nonfiction Publisher: Cappelen Damm Number of pages: 148 Date: March 2023
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“Staying alive” by Michel Houellebecq – Reviews and recommendations
