Interventions 2020

France’s notorious novelist of caustic alienation hurls more firebombs in this provocative collection. Houellebecq (Submission) gathers over two decades of essays, reviews, criticism, and interviews that coldly diagnose the sicknesses of contemporary life; his great theme is the depersonalization of society that turns modern architecture into a soulless showcase for advertising, causes “a real loathing for the flesh in our societies,” and drives the creeping dissolution of all human connection, now further advanced by the Covid lockdowns. While scabrously critical of capitalism, Houellebecq also takes aim at woke verities, leveling sharp imprecations at Islam of the sort that got him tried for hate speech; labeling feminists “amiable dimwits... made dangerous by their disarming lack of lucidity,” and calling Donald Trump “a good president” because of his isolationism and protectionism (while also judging him a “disgusting” man). Houellebecq’s writing is deeply philosophical, but it’s also incisive, pugnacious (poet Jacques Prévert “has something to say... unfortunately, what he has to say is boundlessly stupid”), and suffused with bleak intellectualism: “The purpose of the party is to make us forget that we are lonely, miserable and doomed to death; in other words, to transform us into animals.” The result is a thicket of barbed, nihilistic yet earnestly serious pensées that are as often infuriating as stimulating. (May)