The Economist - USA (2022-02-12)

The Economist February 12th 2022 73

Culture

InsideHouellebecq’sFrance

Light in the void

N

ear thestart of Michel Houellebecq’s

latest  novel,  “Anéantir”,  the  protago­

nist,  Paul  Raison,  finds  himself  in  a  hotel

bar in Addis Ababa with the preternaturally

successful  French  finance  minister,  for

whom  he  works.  A  well­trained  politician

who  is  always  busy  drafting  a  long­term

policy  solution,  Paul’s  boss  serves  as  an

aching reminder of his own bleak failings.

The minister “had never been, and perhaps

would  never  be,  in  the  morose  state  of

mind that was increasingly his own, which

consisted  in  admitting  that  there  is  no

long­term solution; that life itself contains

no long­term solution.”

The former enfant terribleof the French

literary  scene  has  these  days  turned  into

more  of  a  national  treasure.  But  Mr  Hou­

ellebecq  does  not  stray  far  from  familiar

déprimisteterritory  in  his  new  book,  at

least initially. Paul, whose surname means

“reason”,  is  a  high­level  technocrat  with  a

low­level emotional range, a dysfunctional

marriage  and  a  life  marked  by  mono­

chrome  self­doubt.  Yet  Mr  Houellebecq’s

eighth novel—due to be published in Eng­

lish  next  year—is  more  than  a  meditation

onexistentialmelancholy.Italsoholds up

a mirror to contemporary France, this time

in  a  presidential­election  year  and  in

unexpected ways.

“Anéantir”  means  to  annihilate,  or

reduce  to  nothing,  and  the  novel  touches

on  grim  themes  that  are  recognisably

Houellebecquian—solitude, ageing, physi­

cal  degeneration,  suicide,  death,  unsatis­

factory  sex,  emotional  disconnection,  the

transience  of  human  existence.  Little

inconveniences prompt devastating meta­

physical  doubt.  When  Paul’s  dentist  re­

tires, he is undone. “What he couldn’t tol­

erate, he realised with concern, was imper­

manence  itself;  the  idea  that  something,

whatever it was, comes to an end; what he

couldn’t tolerate was nothing less than one

of the essential conditions of life.”

As  ever,  French  literary  critics  have  la­

mented Mr Houellebecq’s flat prose. But it

is  well­suited  to  conveying  the  crushing

mediocrity of both his characters’ relation­

ships  and  the  physical  landscape  they

inhabit.  Far  from  the  country  loved  by

tourists, the novel takes place amid the un­

prepossessing  geography  of  in­between

France: an ibis Styles hotel, a Courtepaille

or Buffalo Grill chain restaurant beside the

motorway  or  on  a  roundabout.  Distances

are  collapsed  by  high­speed  trains,  inter­

vening  pastoral  scenes  blurred  and

obscured.  “Passing  through  an  ocean  of

thick fog at 300km/hour”, Paul has “the im­

pression of numbness, of a motionless fall

in an abstract space”.

Even  gastronomy,  in  the  land  that

celebrates  it,  disappoints.  Paul  finds  a

pre­packaged  “maxi  soft”  chicken­and­

Emmental sandwich lying on a ministerial

tray. His brother­in­law, Hervé, pays a visit

to  Paul’s  father,  who  has  had  a  paralysing

stroke; afterwards, eating dinner at a road­

side chain restaurant, Hervé “mechanical­

ly  turned  a  piece  of  plastery  Camembert”

round  on  his  plate.  The  ordinary  is  deso­

late,  the  inauthentic  absurd.  Paul  lives

amid  urban  concrete  in  a  development

called “Bercy Village”.

A bard of modern France takes a surprisingly upbeat turn

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Anéantir.By Michel Houellebecq.

Flammarion; 736 pages; €26