Houellebecq on Trump

[Jochen Stremmel]

The last sentence should have been a special kind of giveaway – imagine it
in French!

Am Mi., 19. Dez. 2018 um 06:32 Uhr schrieb Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com>:

> 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/
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>>>
> >>> --
> >>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>