Submission

[Mark Kohut]

Kai,

Would you put it in any category such as apocalyptic fiction, in a
slanting and oblique way?

Mark


On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 6:56 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
> 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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