Michel Houellebecq à la Une (review)

This latest addition to the burgeoning body of critical work about Michel Houellebecq does not, as its title implies, consider only the writer's much-discussed flair for novelistic provocation. Rather, this collection of twenty-seven essays, the product of the second global colloquium devoted to Houellebecq, strives to provide an insight into the 'diversité incommensurable' of 'l'œuvre houellebecquienne' (p. 6) by taking his poetry and critical writing as well as his novels into consideration. Scholarly interest in Houellebecq's work to date has delved into the eminently social nature of his writing, exploring how his novels consistently present a contemporary subject at the mercy of consumer and libidinal economies. The intertextual nature of Houellebecq's writing has also been a major critical preoccupation, as has the author's interest in the history of ideas that manifests in his work; much criticism has sought to assert the author as thinker. These strands are all represented here. André G. Jacques, for example, argues that Houellebecq's fiction presents subjects consistently rendered 'haïssables' (p. 345) because of how they serve as a mirror for contemporary societal reality. Sabine van Wesemael convincingly demonstrates how, intertextually, Houellebecq's debut novel Extension du domaine de la lutte can be viewed as 'le remake houellebecquien' of Émile Ajar's 1974 novel Gros-Câlin (p. 274), while Fanny van Ceunebroeck boldly outlines the biblical resonances that can be observed in La Possibilité d'une île. From a philosophical perspective, Sandra Berger, through an examination of the scientific discourses in Houellebecq's writing, stresses that the author undertakes a 'jeu moraliste' in his novels (p. 101). Similarly, Sébastien Sacré explores the conflict between personal ethics and social morality within his texts, while Antonio Muñoz Ballesta considers how Houellebecq's ideas resonate with those of Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Comte. Sandrine Schiano-Bennis argues that Houellebecq's writing can even be examined from the perspective of gnostic thought. The volume is most interesting, however, when it truly sheds light on the areas of Houellebecq's body of work that have not yet received extensive critical consideration. Tomasz Swoboda and Marie Gil offer insights into Houellebecq's poetry: Swoboda, from the perspective of flânerie, suggests that Houellebecq articulates a contemporary form that takes in package tourism, supermarkets, and TV; Gil examines how the poetry makes use of metaphor, concluding that it is marked by impossibility, a symptom of the contemporary age. Delphine Grass extends this approach to a rich consideration of the poetic within Houellebecq's prose, arguing that traces of the theories of the German pre-Romantics can be observed in his practice. While this collection provides a range of useful new angles on Houellebecq's work, readers should be aware that the essays were all written before the appearance in 2010 of the author's La Carte et le territoire, which is therefore not considered in the present volume. In addition, the analysis does not stretch to any extensive consideration of Houellebecq's musical output or his film direction, which might have provided a deeper insight into the real diversity of 'l'œuvre houellebecquienne'.