Michel Houellebecq has been hailed as the most important French writer for a generation. His three novels, Atomized [reviewed Taipei Times Sept. 15, 2002], Platform [reviewed Taipei Times Sept. 29, 2002] and now The Possibility of an Island are unusual in that they combine three literary genres — pornography, science fiction and the novel of ideas. It’s true there were fewer ideas in Platform, which imagined the destruction of a Thai sex-resort by Muslim guerrillas only months before the first of the Bali bombings. But this new novel is again replete with eugenic and other theories, and as such makes claims to being Houellebecq’s most ambitious project to date.
Two narratives alternate. Most extensive is that of Daniel 1, a man spending his time between France and Spain in the early 21st century. A voracious sexual loner whose only real companion is his dog, and a total skeptic about the claims of religion, he nonetheless attends a conference of a New Age cult called the Elohimites on the Spanish island of Lanzarotte. Central to their practices is the recording of members’ DNA with the aim of reincarnation via reproductive cloning. The alternating narratives are by Daniel 1’s cloned descendants, Daniel 24 and then Daniel 25, “neohumans” living 350 years into the future.
Houellebecq is nothing if not a savage satirizer of modern life. To this end he makes Daniel 1 a retired stand-up comic who’s made a fortune with outrageous sketches on topics such as “racism, pedophilia, cannibalism, parricide, acts of torture and barbarism,” and with titles like We Prefer the Palestinian Orgy Sluts. And, in his description of the Elohimite conference, New Age absurdities of every kind are also skewered with farcical abandon with Tibetan mountain horns competing with evocations of Samuel Beckett in a rap video.
Most readers will find the colorful and realistic Daniel 1 narratives more absorbing than the more abstract futuristic sections. I actually read all the former one after another, skipping the others, and then went back and read those set in the future. And indeed this is probably how Houellebecq wrote the book, constructing two narratives and then inter-splicing them to give the illusion of one commenting on the other.
This novel, Houellebecq’s best to date, attracts through its highly intelligent ability to shock. It’s characterized by gross anti-political-correctness diatribes and punchy aphorisms, apparently serious speculation on human biology, extremely graphic sex lacking in romance of any kind, characters who are either transparently selfish or else lonely intellectuals (or both), unabashed racism, and people viewed simply as erotic objects, both by others and by themselves.
Houellebecq’s books are certainly not novels in the tradition of Tolstoy and Balzac whose stories contain rounded characters that interact and hold conversations, which illustrate their personalities in depth. None of the traditional literary themes — expiation of guilt, forgiveness, heroism, devotion — are present either. Instead, they’re the fantasies of one individual, someone who in his darker moods considers human beings to consist merely of digestive tubes with pleasure-giving genitalia attached. Indeed, in the view of some commentators, Houellebecq is himself a representative of the malaise he describes, alienated from all humane values, lonely, self-obsessed, and only capable of finding true friendship with animals. But much the same was true of Jonathan Swift.
And the truth is that this is a brilliant book. It does echo classic English distopian fantasies such as Gulliver’s Travels and Brave New World, and it does repeat some of Houellebecq’s earlier strategies, but it is nevertheless in many respects truly original. The collapse of contemporary cultures that the book presupposes — the Catholic Church, Asian ancestor-revering traditions and even Islam — are made to seem credible developments that are already underway. Ecological disaster, the background to the chapters set in the future, often feels just around the corner, and genetic engineering is already with us. The idea that nuclear wars are inevitable, and that as a result of modern gadgets — computers, mobile phones, digital cameras — there will one day be so much junk that no one any longer has the power supply to use them, must be part of many people’s fears of what is to come.
It may well be that Houellebecq’s current popularity in Europe is due to his openly expressing racist and sexual sentiments that many Europeans secretly feel. The implication, too, that all religions, including Christianity, are cults similar to the Elohimites, with founders and prophets, and offering immortality to those who’ll subscribe to magical impossibilities, is doubtless another part of its appeal.
Surprisingly, Taiwan gets a mention. Daniel 1 is taken to see an art installation at the Paris house of an Elohimite artist. “It consisted of an Asian wedding, celebrated perhaps in Taiwan, or Korea, in a country anyway that had only recently known wealth. Pale pink Mercedes dropped the guests off in the square in front of a neo-Gothic cathedral; the husband, dressed in a white smoking jacket, advanced through the air, a meter above the ground, his little finger entwined with that of his betrothed. Some potbellied Chinese Buddhas, surrounded by multi-colored electric bulbs, quivered with joy ... [The couple] exchanged a long kiss, both virginal and labial ... Fireworks exploded and there was a fanfare of trumpets.”
Translation is a difficult art, but this one, by Gavin Bowd, appears excellent — vivid, fluent, and frequently devastatingly incisive. However much it may shock you, The Possibility of an Island is certain to become a classic. The present decade will be defined in part by its fears and loathings. This novel is a highly intelligent, acerbic, outrageous, wittily sardonic and in very many places breath-takingly brilliant. This, in other words, is a book that shouldn’t, under any circumstances at all, be missed.
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