74 Culture The Economist February 12th 2022
Some of Mr Houellebecq’s previous
novels have been unnervingly prescient,
tapping into French anxieties as they un
fold. “Serotonin”, published in 2019, antici
pated a rural uprising on a motorway inter
section just as the gilets jaunes(yellow jack
ets) streamed onto roundabouts across
France, protesting against a rise in the car
bon tax on motor fuel. Four years earlier Mr
Houellebecq was accused of stirring up far
right Islamophobia with “Submission”,
which imagines France under Islamist
rule; it was published on the day of the
Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack.
“Anéantir” is set in 2027, at the end of
the second term of a president who closely
resembles Emmanuel Macron. Mr Hou
ellebecq does not dwell on this, although
in itself it constitutes a prediction, since
Mr Macron is up for reelection in April
this year. More intriguing, by the end of his
second term France has been transformed
into a competitive, industrially powerful
economy. This is largely thanks to presi
dential instructions carried out by Bruno
Juge—a thinly disguised fictional version
of Bruno Le Maire, Mr Macron’s current fi
nance minister—who is Paul’s drinking
companion in Addis Ababa. Paul considers
him “probably the greatest finance minis
ter since Colbert”. Though the president
was originally elected on the “fantasies of
the startup nation”, it is the revival of
France’s dirigistespirit, embodied by Louis
XIV’s finance chief, which has enabled this
remarkable turnaround.Au revoir tristesse
From a novelist bestknown for his nihilis
tic outlook, this upbeat arc is striking. Past
works, including “Atomised” and “Whatev
er”, deplored degenerate post1968 con
sumerist society, capitalism, narcissistic
individualism and the commodification of
human interaction, usually including sex,
sometimes at pornographic length. Mr
Houellebecq tends to put his finger on a
painful spot in society’s phobias and fears,
and gently press. He connects instinctively
to the ennui and discontent that are
France’s default state of mind.
Indeed, in 2017 the author seemed per
plexed by the victory of the centrist Mr
Macron. Nearly half of voters then backed a
candidate from the extreme left or right
(which polls suggest they may do again
this April). Mr Macron’s runoff opponent
was the nationalistpopulist Marine Le
Pen, who warned of the country’s immi
nent collapse. The final contest was, to
simplify, between his cando confidence
and her doommongering. Mr Houellebecq
commented at the time that the election of
Mr Macron, who later awarded the novelist
the légion d’honneur, was a form of “group
therapy” for a morose nation, and was
designed “to convert the French to opti
mism”. In “Anéantir” he seems to behintingthatthepatientcanbecured.
The last part of the novel takes an
unusuallytenderturn.Aninitialplot,re
volvingaroundaseriesofcyberattacks,
onetargetingtheminister,isneverfully
resolved.Instead,thestorydevelopsintoa
personaldramapromptedby Paul’sown
cancerdiagnosis.Poignancyintrudes,as
heattemptsawkwardlytoreconnectwith
his paralysedfather,grows backinlove
withhiswife,andcontemplatesdeathand
departureamidthescarletandgoldleaves
ofautumnalBurgundy.Franceupbeat?Mr
Houellebecqtender?Eachnotionisasun
settlingastheother,whichmaybeprecise
lytheeffecthesetouttoachieve. nModernChineseliteratureNever-ending
stories
S
ome sensitivesubjects, such as the
Tiananmen crackdown of 1989, have
always been offlimits for Chinese authors.
But between the 1980s and early 2010s, Chi
nese novelists such as Mo Yan and Yan
Lianke were able to portray the enormities
of Maoism as experienced by ordinary peo
ple. That freedom has shrivelled since Xi
Jinping took power in 2012: amid intensify
ing authoritarianism, Megan Walsh notes
in “The Subplot”, the number of cultural
figures imprisoned for “subverting state
power” or “picking quarrels” is “the high
est in the world”.
Nevertheless, argues Ms Walsh in her
wonderful, pacy tour of contemporary Chi
nese literature, the Communist Party’scontrol over creative writing has to some
extent been challenged by growing com
mercialisation and the advent of internet
publishing. The result is a literary land
scape teeming with corruption exposés,
homoerotic fantasy, poignant migrant
worker poetry, timetravelling entrepre
neurs and desolately radical science fic
tion. Together these form “a confusing and
intricate tapestry that offers a beguiling
impression of Chinese society itself”.
The book opens with a survey of tradi
tional print publishing in recent decades.
A generation of authors born in the 1950s
and 1960s reflected deeply on the bewilder
ing transformations of postwar China.
The stories of Mr Mo and Mr Yan stand out
for evoking a sense of tragic dislocation be
tween Maoist political puritanism and the
cutthroat commercialism of the past 40
years. Ms Walsh moves on to the pack of
urban writers who came of age in the liter
ary market economy of the early 21st
century—authors such as Han Han and
Guo Jingming, who became publishing
sensations with their tales of rebellious
teens and vapid fashionistas.
The rise of internet literature, she
shows, has now dismantled the monopoly
on forging reputations and tastes that tra
ditional publishing once held. These days
there are over 461m Chinese readers of on
line writing, with more than 24m fiction ti
tles to choose from. Outlandish trash is the
main genre. Addiction to tales of toxic
masculinity and chicklit romances is fu
elled by extravagant serialisations: one
work has reached 8.33m characters and 998
chapters, and is still growing.
Chinese internet fiction hooks audi
ences by incentivising them to vote, com
ment and create their own content, such as
fan fiction and illustrations; Ms Walsh de
scribes enthusiasts as “prosumers” (both
producers and consumers) rather than
readers. Internet fiction is written too
hastily to count as serious literature, topThe Subplot. By Megan Walsh. Columbia
Global Reports; 133 pages; $16 and £11.99China’s other dreams