NP - Michel Houellebecq

[David Morris]

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-fiction-no-206-michel-houellebecq

--from The Paris Review interview with novelist Michel Houellebecq

INTERVIEWER

What is your concept of the possibility of love between a man and a woman?

HOUELLEBECQ

I’d say that the question whether love still exists plays the same
role in my novels as the question of God’s existence in Dostoyevsky.

INTERVIEWER

Love may no longer exist?

HOUELLEBECQ

That’s the question of the moment.

INTERVIEWER

And what is causing its disappearance?

HOUELLEBECQ

The materialist idea that we are alone, we live alone and we die
alone. That’s not very compatible with love.

INTERVIEWER

Your last novel, The Possibility of an Island, ends in a desolate
world populated by solitary clones. What made you imagine this grim
future in which humans are cloned before they reach middle age?

HOUELLEBECQ

I am persuaded that feminism is not at the root of political
correctness. The actual source is much nastier and dares not speak its
name, which is simply hatred for old people. The question of
domination between men and women is relatively secondary—important but
still secondary—compared to what I tried to capture in this novel,
which is that we are now trapped in a world of kids. Old kids. The
disappearance of patrimonial transmission means that an old guy today
is just a useless ruin. The thing we value most of all is youth, which
means that life automatically becomes depressing, because life
consists, on the whole, of getting old.