May 7th, 2008
Another woman who doesn’t like Michel Houellebecq
If ever there’s a writer who divides people it’s Michel Houellebecq, and quite often this divide occurs along gender lines, with most women loathing his work, accusing him of misogyny and objectification. I was in bookclub once, and we read Atomised (yet another of his books with a semi-naked, skinny girl on the cover). Two out of seven of us liked it (including me), and five absolutely loathed it. There were simply not enough words to describe how hated the book was, but a spirited debate was had.
Houellebecq’s portrayal of women is undoubtedly negative, and and now it seems that there might be an explanation, albeit a very Freudian one. In today’s Guardian, Houellebecq’s mother Lucie Ceccaldi is interviewed about her new memoir, and the fact that she abandoned her son as a child. No coincidence then, that the mother in Atomised who neglects her child in favour of a free love commune is called Ceccaldi.
Houellebecq’s mother disputes his claims of abandonment and calls him an “evil, stupid little bastard” and “a liar, an imposter, a parasite and above all - above all - a petit arriviste ready to do absolutely anything for money and fame.” He in turn has called her an “old slut of a mother”.
Ceccaldi is also Algerian, which makes you wonder if this could be a possible motivation for her son’s outspoken anti-Islamism.
Apart from one other woman (from aforementioned bookclub), I don’t know any other women who like his work. Is he just a man’s writer?
May 7th, 2008 at 10:13 am
I only know one woman that liked Atomised, and all the rest that have read it hated it. I loved it, and I think the criticism of objectivising women is misplaced- one of the major critiques in the novel is the failure of free love and the hippy movement as giving way to a materially obsessed, disconnected society; it is against that societal backdrop, where woman serves as little more than an erotically-charged form, that the novel takes place. It’s probably one of the most accurate and damning descriptions of western society ever, and that’s what makes it uncomfortable reading for some people.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:24 am
is he just a man’s writer ?.. no. I’m a man and I hated Atomised. spoke to a few people who agree.
-nc
May 7th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Green Ink - He tackles the free love concept, and its foibles, very well. It’s not just Ceccaldi who comes off badly - Bruno is seen as sleazy and pathetic, drifting around propelled by desire. Both, regardless of gender, have been failed by what the commune was meant to offer.
I wonder then, if he’s not objectivising, why the frequent naked women covers? They always bugged me.
Neil - what is you dislike about his books? The writing? The themes?
May 7th, 2008 at 11:54 am
That’s the graphics department, isn’t it? The picture on the cover doesn’t affect the text inside. Most of the covers I’ve seen don’t titillate: the women are in awkward postures, the pics are black and white, they are more in a state of ungainly, self-conscious nakedness than the big-titted photoshopped flesh you’d expect if the publishers were after that angle. Considering the world-view described by Houellebecq, it reminds me more of that honest moment of mortality you face into when you see broken blood vessels under your lover’s skin or catch faint bad breath in a loving kiss, than the crotch-grabbing shutter-speed wank of Loaded covers.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I’ve only read Atomized, and while I found it compulsively readable I was appalled by it. Its well written and a brilliantly constructed novel, but its based on a false premise ultimately. Houellebecq, in the same vein as Sarkozy, seems to think that all our current ‘ills’ comes from a liberalization of morality in the 60s, and that 1968 in particular was a watershed.
Not wanting to plug ILR or nuttin, but Seanachie makes the point in his essay on 68 here
Its clear that European culture has changed significantly as a result of the post war boom, the economic stagnation of the 70’s and the free market militancy of the 80s and so on, but its a bit convenient to suggest that some sort of moral lapse is the fault of 68 without looking at it in more depth. Regarding women Houellebecq is extremely sexist, and a little like JW here, seems to be reacting to the rather limited advances that feminism have brought about.
God, what an earnest comment. Basically Houellebecq sucks.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Sometimes I like him, sometimes I don’t but not really for his position on women- I found ‘La Possibilité d’une île’ tedious, more because of the cloning than anything else- I’m no sci-fi lady. I could have taken or left ‘Atomised’ but that could be because it was one of the first novels I read in French and I really struggled.
And then ‘Platforme’ is, in my opinion, a surprisingly beautiful love story (as well as a commentary on modern relationships and attitudes to sex.)
(In France his book covers don’t feature naked women- which might mean something about how his English publishers choose to market him.)
May 7th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Sinéad - the naked women covers (on the English translations, I assume) are surely the choice of his English publishers rather than Houllebecq himself, no ??
Seems to me that English / US publishing houses are a bit too willing to put naked women on covers of all types of books for some reason (most French readers I know deplore the graphic ineptness/sheer ugliness of English-language books).
I’d pull you up on saying his mother is ‘Algerian’ - I think she’s rather a ‘Pied noir’ - part of the French colonial population (which was up to about 1 million by the time of independence and which went back several generations but which kept itself well apart from the ‘natives’). The average ‘Pied noir’ would not have been too well disposed towards Islam either.
I think the virulence of the MH’s view on Islam is classic ‘devil’s advocate’ shit - something the French like a lot (and the Irish too, I reckon) i.e.: I’ll uphold the exact opposite viewpoint to you, just for the sake of an argument.
Followed back your comment from our site - ‘les grands esprits se rencontrent’ clearly :->
May 7th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Can we swap copies? I read the book in the original french (Les Particules Élémentaires, a hard read I have to say), and my copy had a picture of Houellebecq on the front holding shopping bags. That’s just plain wrong: http://www.understandfrance.org/Images/Houellebecq.jpg
But back on topic. I don’t really think you can ever quite *like* one of his books, it’s more a matter of respecting the quality of writing and characterisation, two things he’s a master at.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
As the other woman who liked Atomised i felt that the negative response was somewhat of a knee jerk one - that women should dislike any novel that includes misogeny, portrays a character that acts in an anti feminist manner or perhaps just shows men being pricks to women.
Come on - a book that has a racist character isnt a rasist book, we dont need to hate it on some sort of moralistic stance. A book that perhaps shows men treating women in a fashion that isnt PC or down with the sisters isnt necessarily a bad book.
I dont have to want to have to go for a pint with a character to think them interesting, evocative or well writen.
A book should be judged by is writing - this is fiction not a handbook on dating for men.
Anyway as was said - i liked it.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I (tried to) read “Atomised” a few years ago and it bored me to tears to be honest - I haven’t been able to read any of his books since.
For me there’s nothing worse that being bored by literature (or any other art form for that matter)
May 7th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Green Ink - re the covers - it isn’t necessarily an automatic graphics/publisher choice. Most published authors I know (even ones that aren’t signed to big publishing houses) usually have some sort of of say. So while Houellebecq mightn’t necessarily push for these covers, I wouldn’t say he objects.
And just because a women isn’t bending over covered in oil - on a Houellebecq cover or elsewhere - doesn’t mean it’s not objectification.
Donagh - could you post the link again to the essay? It doesn’t seem to be working.
So you think he’s sexist, or as Green Ink says, not sexist but merely reflecting a sexist society?
Red - I also disliked The Possibility of an Island, and like you it was for reasons of boredom.
Seán Báite - re comment above re covers. All I know is that is mother was born in Algeria and have never seen her described as anything else, but that’s interesting. Would she have been Jewish then? Come to think of it, Houellebecq has been anti-Semitic in the past as well.
I think he’s someone courts controversy, and perhaps his views on Islam are part of that, but he seems like someone who is angry and sees the world in very polarised terms (in interviews I’ve read with him, anyway).
Keith Gaughan - Much like the modern thirst for celebrity gossip, there is an erroneous tendency to judge writers for the people they are rather than on their merits as a writer.
Neva - Another valid point re judging a book on its worth. Books are often dismissed on the basis of liking or not liking a character. I hated all the characters in Atomised, but there were many things of worth in it (structure, the writing, some of the characterisation, the ideas, themes etc).
Leigh, he can be very hit and miss, as you can probably tell from the above comments from everyone. I’ve heard that
If you’re interested, John Updike wrote a very interesting article in the New Yorker a couple of years ago.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/22/060522crbo_books?currentPage=all
May 7th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I quoted the only bit relevant to Houellebecq really, but the whole thing is worth a read (I think) so here you go:
http://www.irishleftreview.org/2008/05/01/1968/
He follows a particular strain of reaction that seems quite common these days. That is, he purposefully goes against a perceived consensus. As his uncharitable mother said in the interview, he says things that he knows will get people’s back up. Nothing particularly original about it and its very difficult to know if he means what he says. Atomised was very well written though, I’ll give him that.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Photography is the objectification of the subject. The distinction that I’m making is objectification that is also serves/seeks to subjugate.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Most women I know who’ve read Houellebecq love him (or his work, rather), despite their misgivings about his misogyny. Mind you, I know loads of Jews that love Céline too, and he’s probably the writer who Houellebecq most resembles. Houellebecq is one of those novelists people tend to put aside their own distaste aside to enjoy. It may have something to do with his clipped style; a friend of mine says that because he comes from a scientific background, he has few of the trappings of literariness (he has also professed to hate modernist fiction and his hero is Balzac, above anyone else). Insufferable as he is, I would have him above Martin Amis any day of the week, not least because he’s a better writer.
As others have pointed out the cover art for the British editions is the choice of the publishers themselves - most French editions of his novels and poetry just have pictures of him on the cover - but more interesting was the choice of Atomised as the title for Les particules élémentaires, considering it was published in the US as The Elementary Particles.
BTW Though Seán Báite is right about pieds noirs not being too disposed to Islam, Houellebecq’s mother converted to Islam, whence much of his anti-Islamic comments, I imagine.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I don’t think Houellebecq’s a misogynist, really. His attitude seems to be more along the lines of “I’m not a racist, I hate everybody equally”.
I think part of the reason why men might react better to his books is that we’re more used to the kind of characterisations he uses. There’s more acceptance of men being characterised in unpleasant ways than women, which I think this might be part of the reason why women tend react so badly to his writing. The thing is, though, his characters, while not exactly pleasant, feel *real* all the more because of how broken they are. I don’t think he’d be able to say what he wants in his work any other way.
I’ll give this to him: he was the author who convinced me I didn’t have to enjoy a book for it to be good, I just had to feel it as worth reading, to possibly be the kind of book I’d go back and reread.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
You might say… she ain’t no Houellebecq girl.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
‘The extension of the domain of struggle’ is a rough but fairly accurate translation of the title Houellbecq’s first novel. It was published as ‘Whatever’ in English. This is strange as the original provides a neat summing up of what Houllebecq is getting at in his novels, namely the unbridled march of free market capitalist economics into every area of human activity. In other words, the terrain of the struggle against capital is no longer limited to that between workers and their bosses or between citizens and the state but is now witnessed at the level of the personal. What else, for example, are social networking sites like Bebo but attempts to commodify individual experience for profit? Houllebecq’s problem with the Sixties is that that decade initiated the profound fetishisation of ‘the individual’ as centre of modern Western societies. What a short time it was between the hippies needing to find themselves and Thatcher declaring there was no such thing as society, just a collection of individuals.
To reduce discussion about Houllebecq to a question as to whether women ever like his books seems pretty lame. But I suppose I would say that given I’m a guy…
May 12th, 2008 at 9:41 am
“…that women should dislike any novel that includes misogyny, portrays a character that acts in an anti feminist manner or perhaps just shows men being pricks to women.
Come on - a book that has a racist character isn’t a racist book, we don’t need to hate it on some sort of moralistic stance.”
I couldn’t agree more. I’m a feminist but it doesn’t mean I hate books with appalling female characters. I don’t mind nude photos on book covers either. I hate objecting for the sake of objecting. Many of my characters, male and female, are horrible people. They exist in our world and they are often more interesting to read about than, say, chick-lit ciphers.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Seanachie - I think you’ve put your finger on one of the things I like most about him - that he has “few of the trappings of literariness”, as you say. There is a constant push-pull in his work between the rational and scientific versus the aesthetic and creative.
Keith - He is defintely a writer who makes you think that reading his work doesn’t have to be enjoyable to see the merit, but then that’s something I think we can say about a lot of writers (James Kelman springs to mind).
Dotsy - “To reduce discussion about Houllebecq to a question as to whether women ever like his books seems pretty lame.”
This is merely a discussion about one angle of his work, in the same way you might talk about colonialism in Rushdie or magic realism in Angela Carter. It doesn’t reduce it, it’s just focusing on an aspect of his work, that seems to alienate large numbers of people (women).
WRW - I don’t think anyone was saying they dislike his work because they dislike the characters. Let’s face it, most of literatures best characters are the evil/damaged/self-obsessed ones that no one really likes.
I like Houellebecq’s work, and think he’s very strong on character. And I’m not sure the women who object to his work are objecting for the sake of it - Houellebecq provides adequate reason for objecting to his work.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
‘Atomised’ is one of the few books I’ve abandoned half-way through, largely because I found it unrelentingly depressing!
But a friend of mine found humour where I found grimness — and I suppose the idea of breaking one’s pelvis at an orgy IS funny, if you’re in the right frame of mind.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I think you’re right Sylvia, you really need to be in a particular humour for Houllebecq: I read Atomised a few years ago and really hated it. A friend exhorted me to try again with Platform and I absolutely loved it. I returned to Atomised and did actually enjoy it although Platform is probably my favourite.
“Whatever” really put me in mind of JK Huysmans “Downstream” in that it deals with no-mark functionaries written by authors who are clearly in really narky form!
I didn’t like Possibility of an Island at all. It was boring and the ideas seemed a bit half baked.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I found Atomised and especially Platform to be superbly written and astonishingly, unrelentingly harrowing. I don’t think a bleaker worldview exists in contemporary literature. I can’t remember another book which has left me so completely shell-shocked in the past few years. However, I don’t think I could ever claim to “like” his work; to me, it’s not possible. I’d agree with seanachie that Houellebecq’s a better writer than Amis, but he’s only written two great books, as opposed to Amis’ one (Money). Possibility of an Island ain’t so great. And I don’t think he’s a men’s writer - I reckon he’s only writing for an audience of one. If anything, he seems to think gender is a destructive force. I’ll have to go back and read Platform again over the summer, to see if I can handle it again.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Forgot to say - the way he holds his cigarettes is DEPRAVED! If anything qualfies him as a deviant, it’s that.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:14 am
The way he holds his ciggy is very L Cohen..
I’m just finishing Platform for the 1st time. Its fascinating.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
A discussion of magical realism in Angela Carter would simply be about literary form. While colonialism in Rushdie is tracing the effect of historical fact on fiction. Detached exercises both. But deciding on Houllebecq on the basis of one’s own gender? This is subjective, essentialist and yes most definitely reductionist. To claim otherwise is disingenuous. But I suppose it passes the time and he does seem to have a bit of a problem with women.
May 15th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Dotsy, I think it’s reductionist to reduced discussions on Carter to literary form. Ditto Rushdie on historical fact on fiction.`The question discussing Houellebecq in the context of gender is not subjective - it may have been if I said I didn’t like his work (I do) and based that view on being a woman (I didn’t), so I’ll have to disagree with your claims of disingeniousness.
Are you still blogging?
May 15th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I think we will have to let this argument go. I am starting to blog again after a long absence. Thanks for asking!