Soumission

the Spanish edition has the best cover I think

Soumission is the new novel by Michel Houellebecq. Set in the France of 2022 it imagines the growth in the far right National Front party and the possibility of Marianne Le Pen becoming President of the Fifth Republic; in out-right panic the French left unifies behind a moderate Muslim candidate for president and he wins. The moderate Muslim turns out not to be so moderate: sharia law is introduced, the burka is made compulsory dress for women, harsh Islamic penal codes are introduced (including the return of the death penalty) women are banned from most jobs and building on decades of political correctness heavy censorship is introduced. In Houellebecq's fiction these reforms prove to be very popular - especially the full employment that is created when women are forced back into the home and the grisly penal system which satisfies a latent blood lust. The French people adapt to life under sharia with a gallic shrug just as most French people adapted to life under Vichy. 
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Much ink has been spilled on the implausibility of Houellebecq's book but I don't think it's as implausible as all that. Certainly in 2022 this is an unlikely scenario but if demographic trends continue (4 words that you should always take with a pinch of salt) France could have a Muslim majority by 2050. And as for the rise of the far right? Well yesterday a very right wing government came to power in Poland, in Hungary the far right rules and anti immigration parties are increasingly relevant across much of Europe. No, the plausibility or implausibility of the book is a red herring, what's more important to ask is, is the book any good? And the answer to that is no not really. With rare exceptions most writers lose their sense of humour as they get older. The gift of melody and the gift of humour don't seem to flourish much past the age of 40 and Houellebecq's best books seem to be behind him now. Platform, Lanzarote, Atomised and to a lesser extent The Map and the Territory were biting and funny satires of French life and culture, Soumission is not quite up there with those, I'm afraid. I don't mind when a writer grinds his axe and shows you the grinding of the axe page after page as long as that axe grinding is entertaining or arresting or lyrical or funny. Soumission is axe grinding for the sake of axe grinding and the targets are pretty easy: French Islamists, Parisian left wing intellectuals, self important actors and politicians etc. Who couldn't make a book out of mocking those dudes? To borrow from Truman Capote: Houellebecq isn't so much writing this story as typing it. 
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Soumission is a book with a lot of baggage. Houellebecq was on the cover of Charlie Hebdo magazine when two unhinged Islamists burst into the offices and massacred most of the staff. Houellebecq himself went into hiding and now has a 24 police escort. You want to recommend Soumission just to spite those lunatics who threaten civil society and freedom of speech in the west, but I can't recommend it because I didn't really like it that much. (A fortiori I didn't like The Satanic Verses either (Rushdie - it seems to me - like Joseph Heller, really only had one book in him.)) I don't know if Houellebecq has shot his bolt now. He's living in a dismal part of Paris in a grim flat under more or less house arrest. I think maybe a holiday in Thailand might be good for him and for the rest of us who'd enjoy a return to his earlier, funnier, better books. 

Books Of The Year

Its been another great reading year for me: so far I've got through 54 books in a lot of different genres and categories and by luck (or good choices) very few of them have been terrible. The ones below are those which I gave an 'A' grade to in the little book journal that I've been keeping since 1994. As usual I'm going to do a separate list for crime fiction novels later in December and I think that this year I'm also going to do a separate list for science fiction because I read a surprising number of great sci-fi novels. If I had to say one bad thing about the year's reading it would be a lack of a decent history book; all the big history books that came out this year were disappointing (to me, anyway) and felt like a retread of earlier books and ideas. Anyway here are the books that got 'A' grades in my journal in the chronological order in which I finished them: 

Arguably - Christopher Hitchens He's still wrong about the invasion of Iraq and his bizarre hero worship of the less than saintly Thomas Jefferson but he's right about so many other topics and his writing style is masterful. Hitch we miss you. 

Post Office - Charles Bukowski For those of us who have worked in a post office this book will give you chills of recognition and maybe a laugh or two.

Platform - Michel Houellebecq The funniest book I read all year. Its about sex tourism in Thailand from a French misanthrope novelist who lives next door to Shannon airport because its so wet, dark and miserable there. 

The Collected Essays Of George Orwell 1400 pages of amazing stuff. A must read for the serious bibliophile.

The Art Of Fielding - Chad Harbach Best debut novel I read all year. A wonderful book about baseball, friendship, love and loss. 

Lassie Come Home - Eric Knight I read this to my daughter Sophie and I have to say that the book just knocked my socks off. This is an intelligent, gripping wonderful children's novel with terrific adventure and character development. And unlike that awful Black Beauty with its talking horses, Knight actually gets into the mind of Lassie in a very convincing manner. 

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel I give up on this novel for 3 years but when I finally started it again I read the whole thing in three frenzied days. A masterpiece. 

Bring Up The Bodies - Hilary Mantel Mantel's Thomas Cromwell is one of the greatest characters in modern fiction. Smart, cunning, irreverent, compassionate, deft, ruthless. . .you run out of superlatives describing this sixteenth century badass. 

The Red Queen - Matt Ridley Sexual selection and evolution explained in a witty and erudite book.

HHhH - Laurent Binet The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague by the Czech underground as told in a very French dry, clever and postmodern manner. 

High Fidelty - Nick Hornby Took me a LONG time to come round to Nick Hornby but this book is a deserved modern classic that dares to suggest that - gasp - men have feelings too. If you're thinking of getting someone Telegraph Avenue as a Christmas present, don't do it, get them this instead.

Cooking With Fernat Branca - James Hamilton Paterson Did I say that Platform was the funniest book I read all year? Ok, thats only because I forgot about this. This is at least as funny as Platform and the "UFO" scene had me in tears...

Why Does the World Exist - Jim Holt A nice exploration of cosmogony and existentialism in a clear style without any footnotes. Nothing particularly new here but its good to see a popular book talking about these themes.

The Fortress Of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem I've had a while to think about this book now and my opinion hasn't changed. The best novel I read all year and a strong contender for the best American novel of the century so far.  

The Incredible Shiteness of Being: The Fiction of Michel Houellebecq

Houellebecq at home in County Clare

French novelist Michel Houellebecq has a reputation as a pervy, intellectual, misanthropic shit stirrer. If you're a hipster who lives in Notting Hill, The West Village or the Rive Gauche this is sufficient reason to read his books but alas neither you nor I are such hepcats. Fortunately for us Houellebecq is also funny. I've read three of his books now: Platform, The Map and the Territory and Lanzarote and they were all pretty amusing. French humour is like French rock music: at best an acquired taste; but Houellebecq has decided not to mine the vein of French comedy that is exemplified by Jacques Tati and Marcel Marceau, no he's decided that he wants to be that rare fromage - a Frenchman who actually makes you laugh. 
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Platform is his best book with a deliriously sarcastic first third, a rather boring middle section and a surprisingly great ending. Lanzarote is a kind of dry run for Platform and is terrific all the way through its large print 80 pages. The Map And The Territory is a different animal. It won the Prix Goncourt and has a much more serious feel about it. Houellebecq is really trying hard to say something about art (his hero is an artist) life (the artist is depressed) and the artificiality of the novel form (Michel Houellebecq appears as a character in the book). The book has attained some controversy because Houellebecq lifted entire sections of the novel from French Wikipedia, but thats not really the problem. The problem is that Houellebecq didn't sufficiently bring the funny, except in the chapters that take place in and around Shannon Airport where his depression and misanthropy really have a fertile soil in which to grow (as all of us who have spent time in Shannon will testify). Still if you're going to read one French novel this year The Map and the Territory is a good one to go for. If you want a few laughs and are not easily scandalised try Platform.

Why Most Crime Novels Are Bad Part 2

good role model

Last week I did a little post on why I thought most crime novels were terrible. As a sometime crime reviewer for the press I see a lot of crime fiction and most of the ones that I am forced to read are beyond awful. I do self select good novels to read on my own time but in general the books that are mass marketed to the public are artistically worthless with recycled plots, stereotypical characters, ugly prose and a depressing lack of humour. The key to these books success is heavy marketing by publishers and a supine, unadventurous public. Of course there are good novels in amongst the tat but even good novelists fall into the success trap by turning their creation into a series which eventually leads to diminishing returns. As I discovered in the comments under my post last week there are many noble exceptions to this rule and there are  authors who fight the good fight and use their intelligence and creativity to keep their series fresh. But I wonder if this is really the best use of that intelligence and creativity. Instead of writing book #14 in the Bumrash and Crabby mysteries perhaps these successful novelists should take a long look in the mirror and try something original, experimental and different - something that would shake their readers up a bit and make them think. Something that would really challenge them as a writer and perhaps could be looked at 100 years from now as a really interesting 
contribution to the culture. 
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This thought came to me last night when I was reading the new Michel Houellebecq novel The Map And The Territory (not, alas, as funny or as biting as Atomised) when I came upon this defintion of an artist: 

bad role model

To be an artist in his view, was above all, to be someone submissive. Someone who submitted himself to mysterious, unpredictable messages, messages which commanded you to take a path in an imperious and categorical manner without the slightest possibility of escape (except by losing any notion of integrity and self respect). These messages could involve destroying a work, or even an entire body of work, to set off in a radically new direction, or even occasionally no direction at all without any project or end point in mind.


I like this idea very much. Why not just say no to the publishers who want you to write a book a year for twenty years. All the worst offenders I can think of in this field are rich beyond the dreams of avarice and have provided for their kids and grandkids many times over. Why not just stop and take some time to think. Move to Alaska for a year or Detroit or India. Get away from your comfort zone. Learn a bit about the world. Learn a bit about yourself. Listen to the noise. Listen to the silence. And, to quote Mick Jagger, sometimes give the public what they need instead of always what they want.