La carte et le territoire by Michel Houellebecq (review)

HOUELLEBECQ, MICHEL. La carte et le territoire. Paris: Flammarion, 2010. ISBN 978-20812 -4633-1. Pp. 428. 22 a. Jed Martin is a visual artist who achieves success through photographs of Michelin maps detailing various sections of France. Hence the title. After years of seclusion he returns to the art scene with paintings first of objects of daily use, such as knives and forks, and then oil portraits of people from all walks of life. In this latter series, his last subject is the novelist Michel Houellebecq. Eventually he meets Houellebecq who remains true to his image; he is dirty, drunk, nasty, and fat. However they become friends and Houellebecq writes the introduction to Jed’s exposition catalogue. Houellebecq’s mood improves; he leaves Ireland to return to France where he settles in his native village in Le Loiret, a deserted place which nevertheless features streets named after Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Kant. All seems well until the day when Houellebecq is discovered, the victim of a grisly crime. Someone decapitated him and his dog to boot. With Jed’s aid, the police determine that the murderer was a rich and perverse plastic surgeon who killed the writer because he wanted Jed’s portrait of him. In the final pages, Jed moves to the country, and continues to paint successfully until he dies. La carte et le territoire can be considered as three novels in one, a portrait of the artist as a young man, a novel about the meaning of art, and a polar. Or it can be considered no novel at all, but rather some witty musings by Houellebecq about what people think of him, what he thinks of the art establishment and the media, and finally what he thinks of himself. I believe most people will read this as Houellebecq par lui-même, and they will be rewarded. The narrative is set in the not too distant future. We learn, for instance, that Houellebecq’s friend, Frédéric Beigbeder died at age seventy-one, and that Houellebecq was baptized shortly before his demise. The Houellebecq we meet here has indeed shed the old man and taken on the new. He is still mordantly funny when he writes about the sanctimonious art industry and the media-driven Catholic Church, and certainly on target when he sends up the contemporary French passion for turning every corner of the country into a tourist attraction at once rustic and cute, peopled by relentlessly innovative chefs such as “Miguel Santamayor, cuisinier d’intuition qui opérait une synthèse hors normes de la tradition et du futurisme” (101). Yet he appears less cutting, and if not exactly tolerant, at least indifferent about the activities of those who have attempted to make careers explaining Michel Houellebecq or exploiting his public image. Jed Martin’s astonishment may well be shared by readers of this book when they discover that Houellebecq “avait l’air heureux” (237). The death of the old Houellebecq and the birth of the new seem to be the principal concern of this text. Unhappy in Ireland, but rejuvenated back home, the essence of the writer’s talent and nothing of his personality seem to have passed into Jed Martin after the murder. Martin, like the older writer, moves to a secluded spot in France, where he continues to be productive but at his own pace. The critique of the trendy return of la France profonde to its largely nonexistent but very marketable roots continues with Jed, who like the writer is now saddened rather than outraged by the transformations and distortions taking place around him. Yet he continues to work without feeling the responsibility to personally combat all those committed to turning France into a Gallic amusement park. It is hard to imagine saying this about a Houellebecq text, but this is a touching book. Florida State University William Cloonan Reviews 401 ...