Submission

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Disagreement over here. Houellebecq, who emphasized Islamist terrorism 
already in his third novel "Platform", did write the last and - in this 
context - decisive chapter not in indicative but in conjunctive! Mark 
Lilla didn't get this in his review, and you seem to have problems with 
understanding it too. "Submission" is not written to be in itself a 
legitimate version of the future of France or Europe: It's a warning to 
wake up before it's too late! Furthermore, your characterization that 
"(i)t all seems like a black joke" appears superficial to me. Did you, 
as a raised Catholic, not feel the spiritual seriousness and yearning in 
the passages on medieval Christianity in general and the Black Madonna 
of Rocamadour in particular? That's the Henry Adams thread, to put it in 
Pynchonian terms. No irony at all in these parts - Knausgaard's review 
is correct here -,  but perhaps you have to be European to realize this. 
And then Houellebecq - maybe you should be more careful with saying 
things like this these days - does certainly not hate the French people 
but simply knows what time it is. I could imagine that his view here 
does not differ that much from what Niall Ferguson recently wrote in the 
Boston Globe: "Like the Roman Empire in the early fifth century, Europe 
has allowed its defenses to crumble. As its wealth has grown, so its 
military prowess has shrunk, along with its self-belief. It has grown 
decadent in its shopping malls and sports stadiums. At the same time, it 
has opened its gates to outsiders who have coveted its wealth without 
renouncing their ancestral faith." That ancestral faith probably 
wouldn't be a problem if all Muslims were Sufis, but this is not the 
case. Not that I know what to do now. I just try not to become cynical 
and to stay awake.

Btw, me personally thinks that Story of O is among the very best prose 
written by women ever.


On 24.11.2015 17:25, rich wrote:
> Near the end of the book the narrator comments on the Story of 0, the 
> usual type of books he despises though he gives it some credit for its 
> passion and ideas. Reading Submission mirrors that feeling. A 
> generally awful person finds reason to live to live in Islamic France 
> that he could not find wrapped in a Western liberal tradition: 
> multiple wives to cook fuck and what have you; a return to the family 
> or in the narrator's case a new family; a return to patriarchy which 
> it is claimed keeps societies stable and ensures perpetuation of new 
> citizens; the end of his Huymans obsession as it relates to religious 
> conversions; hey even triple the pay to teach.
>
> It all seems like a black joke. His hatred of the French, its 
> intellectuals, culture, its politicians rivals Thomas Bernhard's 
> screeds on his native Austria.
> Houellebecq can be funny at times but considering what happened in 
> Paris (where if I'm correct some of the same neighborhoods are 
> mentioned in the novel) its not an easy laugh
>
> Fwiw, I dont take the book all that seriously--the book takes places 
> about 10 years in the future. I doubt we'll see a character like ben 
> Abbes anytime soon, especially in France.
>
> rich
>
>
>

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