Buzz Sociopolitics Malaysia: Michel Houellebecqs Version of the American Thriller

Michel Houellebecqs Version of the American Thriller

Photograph of Michel Houellebecq by Michael Lionstar

Michel Houellebecq's new novel is the weird air plant of the book: it feeds off atmosphere, rsther than than soil. The climate of "The Map as good as the Territory" is really still as good as really strange, as if something bad had only been detonated over it. The same bad thing may additionally have convulsed France, where the story is set, given Houellebecq's Paris exists in the state of flagrant social breakdown as good as the countryside has turn an emptied thesis park of itself. This "was exactly what the universe would look like," the sense thinks upon entering the lifelike French encampment that only second-home-owners can afford to buy into, "after the blast of an intergalactic proton bomb."

In 2010, this novel, Houellebecq's fifth, won the Prix Goncourt, France's highest well read prize, an honor his fans felt was prolonged overdue. You can see why "The Map as good as the Territory" might strike the esteem jury as more, well, honorable than Houellebecq's previous books. It deals with art as good as architecture, rsther than than sex tourism. It is set in galleries as good as villages rsther than than S-M clubs as good as massage parlors. Only the singular paean to Thai prostitutes is offered up, as good as then in the indifferent murmur. The prose, nonetheless often brief as good as crude in the manner that has made Houellebecq notorious, is additionally during times lyrical. (The interpretation is smooth as good as competent, giving the pungent taste of Houellebecq's opposite modes: archly sarcastic, cheerily pedantic, with malice aforethought brutal.) Not the singular soixante-huitard (former French radical student) or ex-hippie makes an idiotic or reprehensible remark. Only the singular unattractive lady has her failings itemized, a! s good a s she's differently likable. Muslim immigrants conjunction conflict nor come under attack.

Instead, the good-looking artist declared Jed Martin achieves uncommon professional success; earns the adore of Olga, the Russian publicist who "corresponded perfectly to the image of Slavic beauty as popularized by displaying agencies given the fall of the U.S.S.R."; as good as joins the global art-world elite. A important author declared Michel Houellebecq writes catalog copy for the singular of Martin's shows. There's the hideous murder, the scold if world-weary inspector, an astonishing solution to the crime. The themes have been the great ones: art, death, informative decline.

If this outline makes "The Map as good as the Territory" receptive to advice arrange of similar to the American-thriller chronicle of the Houellebecq novel, that's given it is. In outline, anyway. You really get the sense that Houellebecq thinks American thrillers have been the representative genre of the age, only as the airports where such novels have been sold have turn its characteristic architectural form. It is no fluke that multiform scenes in the novel take place in, as good as embody meditations on, airports. This is Houellebecq's hommage la globalisation.

It's additionally his entrance of age. A crony of mine calls this novel Houellebecq's "Annie Hall," the outline that strikes me as apt for dual reasons. First, because, similar to Woody Allen in that movie, Houellebecq portrays himself here reduction as the clown than as the established artist he has become, however ambivalently, as good as grapples with his place in the culture. Second, given this novel is extremely funny, in the dark, disconcerting mode of that both Allen as good as Houellebecq have been masters.

Like any product aimed during the universe market, "The Map as good as the Territory" traffics in code names. No automobile is ever only the car; it's an Audi A6 allroad, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, the Lexus. Jed doesn't only shop! for foo d, he goes to his Casino hypermarket, or he studies the operation of Norwegian mineral waters available during the Sushi Warehouse during the 2E wing of the Roissy airport, before opting for Husqvarna.

What distinguishes this from an tangible airfield novel is that Houellebecq subjects these brands to extended semiotic analysis. "Subtle hedonists, these Norwegians," Jed thinks as he pauses over the water, pleased "that so many opposite forms of purity could exist." Houellebecq devotes the page as good as the half to the tighten reading of the direction manual for Jed's Samsung ZRT-AV2 camera. The sense declared "Houellebecq" weeps during the thought that his 3 favorite consumer equipment Paraboot upon foot boots, the Canon Libris laptop-printer combination as good as the Camel Legend parka have been discontinued. "It's brutal," he says, lamenting the irresponsibility of product-line managers who turn customers' lives in to "an unconstrained erratic in between evermore modified product lines." You're probably meditative that such graduate-student-level disquisitions upon consumerism have got to be silly as good as boring. Au contraire! In Houellebecq's hands, they're delightful, as technologically good informed as the review upon CNet as good as as amusing as the riff in the Quentin Tarantino movie.

The characters, too, have the friendly laxity of general brands. Martin, the quintessential lonely artist-hero, has no tighten friends, maintains distant, scold family with his distant, scold father as good as doesn't adore Olga scarcely enough. Being Russian, Olga is warm as good as expressive and, as noted, absurdly gorgeous. "Houellebecq" is the unwashed, depressive bard we've review about in newspapers, nonetheless he drinks the small less. The inspector, Jasselin, is as courteous as good as old-school as the sense from the le Carr novel. He drives the Mercedes Class A, by the way, "the ideal automobile for an old integrate but children, who live in an urban or periurban area, none! theless do not demur to provide themselves from time to time to an escapade."

Being Houellebecquian as good as two-dimensional, any of these total thinks three-dimensional thoughts, or during slightest sincerely engaging ones. Olga, whose pursuit involves retooling the Michelin brand, visits French inns as good as restaurants while upon vacation, as good as muses over the criteria by that they should be judged the more authentically French they are, she decides, the more delectable to Russian as good as Chinese tourists. "Houellebecq" offers shrewd appreciations of forgotten well read total as good as reminds Martin, "We as well have been products . . . informative products. We as well will turn obsolete." Jasselin cogitates suavely upon the psychology of crime as good as the merits of highway rest stops tighten to Paris compared with rest stops over out.

Judith Shulevitz is the author of "The Sabbath World: Glimpses of the Different Order of Time."