Houellebecq on Trump
Keith Davis
kbob42 at gmail.com
Tue Dec 18 23:10:37 CST 2018
Thanks for this take on him. Enlightening.
Www.innergroovemusic.com
> On Dec 19, 2018, at 12:06 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've read Platform, The Elementary Particles, The Map and the
> Territory and Submission as part of my promise to myself to read at
> least one French language novel per year in the original language.
>
> Platform was... okay. Not great.
>
> The Elementary Particles was excellent, perhaps the best novel I read
> that entire year, and very memorable with some bon mots and ideas that
> stay with me still. It's a minor masterpiece, and a semi-nihilistic
> tour de force, not quite on the level of Celine, but still formidable.
>
> The Map and the Territory was an entertaining PoMo potboiler with some
> interesting things to say about the mounting failures and increasingly
> depressurized spiritual milieu of late capitalist liberal democracy,
> in particular as it pertains to the increasing popularity of
> euthanasia, not just for unbearable physical pain at the end of the
> arc of physical decline, but also for the ennui brought about by
> accelerating civilizational alienation and anomie. It was genuinely
> sad in parts, and I certainly don't regret having read it.
>
> I read Submission - MH's novel imagining Europe's relatively bloodless
> conquer by a sort of kinder, gentler, "Reform" version of Islam -
> immediately after reading Joris-Karl Huysmans' Satanist novel, La-Bas
> (Down There) because Submission is, in part, an homage to La-Bas, in
> that there is a significant sub-plot involving the main character
> conducting research into the life and work of Huysmans, just as the
> main character of La-Bas is writing a study of notorious child
> torturing serial killer (and Joan of Arc's right hand man) Gilles de
> Rais. If you know a bit about Huysmans' late-life conversion to
> Catholicism, you can generally suss out the use MH makes of it in
> relation to the book's core project. Submission is not quite as
> impressive as The Elementary Particles, but it's quite good, and
> certainly isn't the kind of book you would expect a slobbering
> Islamophobic hate-monger to write.
>
> I'll happily read his next novel.
>
> As for this Harper's editorial... I'd call it a bad joke if it hadn't
> made me laugh so damn hard.
>
> I bet he was smirking from the moment he hit "send" on the email to
> the moment he submitted the electronic payment into his online bank's
> checking account.
>
> Cheers!
> Yer old pal Jerky
>
>
>> On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 9:50 AM Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> When I started reading one of Houllebecq’s novels, I was impressed, but by halfway in, I had lost interest, and it ended up going nowhere. It was a waste of time. I won’t be reading him again.
>>
>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>>
>>> On Dec 18, 2018, at 9:13 AM, Jemmy Bloocher <jbloocher at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Houllebecq makes me seethe. I wish I could express how much or the
>>> particulars of why. But did he have to mention Switzerland. So many hold
>>> Switzerland in such high esteem (notably I remember reading Alain de Boton
>>> waxing lyrical about the wonders of Switzerland in a Guardian article years
>>> ago - I should find a link), but I just don't understand why. It makes no
>>> sense to me. It works on paper, just not in reality (and I have spent a lot
>>> of time in Switzerland). I shall have to revisit this and justify my
>>> raging. Thanks for the link Thomas.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 1:26 PM Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This may be of interest to some:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://harpers.org/archive/2019/01/donald-trump-is-a-good-president/
>>>>
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