The Elementary Particles
Comments: 6
I’m reading The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq (translated into English by Frank Wynne) and just can’t put it down. It’s a wonderful, wonderful book, although it may yet turn out to be “a deeply repugnant read” as The New York Times called it.
Whatever one ends up making of it (and there’s no clear way out of the muddled polemical morass it presents), it’s clear that it’s an important book that fully deserves the attention it’s received since it was published in 2000. I’m thoroughly enjoying it, although I’m not sure that I agree with any of it — or, if I do, it’s certainly on different terms to the arguments it presents. A reviewer in Slate called it “a neoconservative rant” (before suggesting its importance) but I’m not sure that’s such a good reading. Certainly the novel seems as derisive of conservative mores as it is of the vacuous liberalism and ‘spirituality’ arising from the 1960s.
It suffers from a similar ‘problem’ that Richard Powers was recently accused of — namely that the characters are not at all characters but merely mouthpieces for certain ideas or points of view. This seems quite intentional here, however, and doesn’t feel like a shortcoming.
What’s more interesting is the way the book reveals how the form of the novel snaps when the weight is loaded in certain ways. You don’t have to believe (as I do) that the novel is humanity’s greatest artistic achievement since the discovery of perspective in painting to appreciate what it has to say about the abilities and limitations of the form.
I hope I don’t end up hating this novel, but if I do, it will be with a bright, burning passion that few works of art ever earn.
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Posted to Books • 2003.02.28 (Fri) • 14:44
Comments
Posted by Dave 2003.03.01, 02:51
Interesting. I picked up the Elementary Particles more than a year ago, and found it rather uninteresting. So much so that I couldn’t bring myself to finish it (which is fairly rare for me). I gathered it was a sort of modern day Hesse novel, akin to Steppenwolf and Narcissus & Goldmund.
As you’ve spoken so highly of it, perhaps I need to give it another chance.
Posted by Mac 2003.03.01, 03:31
i read it a few weeks ago (incidentally it was retitled ‘atomised’ for the paperback edition in the uk&irl) and, while it did get me thinking and i’m certainly somewhat the better for reading it, it did leave me cold. the final chapter, which seemed a bit tacked on to me, didn’t help matters.
Posted by Mac 2003.03.01, 03:36
oops, hope i didn’t give too much away there! i won’t elaborate on that any further; anyway, you’ll see what i mean when you get there.
Posted by jh 2003.03.01, 11:51
Dave —- If you’re reading it for plot and character development, you’re going to be sadly disappointed. Rather than Hesse, I get the impression Houellebecq hoped to draw comparisons to Camus (not that your mention of Hesse is off the mark).
Mac —- You didn’t give anything away, but I think I see what you mean. I picked up the book again when I got home last night and suddenyl the pacing had changed. This was the part beginning with the death of Bruno and Michel’s mother and continuing on to where he leaves for Ireland (something else happens in there which it would be unfair to mention, but I’m sure you know the parts I mean).
I was feeling a little skittish as I read last night because I mentioned the book yesterday but found myself reading something that didn’t quite correspond to what I’d written about. It may yet go downhill —- I have one chapter and the epilogue to go.
Posted by Tom Dyson 2003.03.05, 02:22
Jeremy, I think you’re right to make the Camus connection. In fact Whatever, Houellebecq’s earlier novella, includes a distinct and ironic allusion to L’Etranger. I hope you enjoyed the last chapter and epilogue: I finshed it with the feeling that I’d read something important; and that contemporary novels are stylised and dated by comparison (perhaps Camus’s first readers felt this too?).
Posted by Enzzz 2003.03.06, 18:19
Well, I read Huellebecq about one year ago and I enjoyed it. Just after, I read also another one (I do not know the english title), with similar feelings. It is hard to call it goor writing - but his characters are sadly interesting, a good picture of some of us. Sad, desperately conservative, but confused about how to conserve.
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