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Peer Reviewed

Title:

Michel Houellebecq: The Impossibility of Being an Island

Journal Issue:

Paroles geles, 25(1)

Author:

Rowlins, James, USC

Publication Date:

2009

Publication Info:

Paroles geles, UCLA Department of French and Francophone Studies, UC Los Angeles

Permalink:

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8h50z8df

Keywords:

Houellebecq, Realism, intertextuality, Balzac, Christianity, Humanism

Abstract:

Michel Houellebecq has encouraged the French press and media to cast him as an isolatedwriter with island status. Despite his attempts to revolt against trends in criticism sincepoststructuralism, Houellebecq creates an intertextual archipelago that links his work to bothliterary history and contemporary cultural thought. In addition to making reference to twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon novels and film, Houellebecq employs narrative techniques typical ofnineteenth-century realist writers from the French tradition, like Zola, Flaubert, and, especially,Balzac. His use of speculation as a narrative device and his attention to moral defects in hischaracters could lead readers to believe that he supports a return to Humanist philosophy thatshuns literary developments since May 68. However, the rebellious stance that appears in hisnovels and his recently published correspondence with Bernard-Henri Lvy ultimately betrays anengagement with the same literary and cultural ideas against which he attempts to rebel. As aresult, Houellebecq illustrates the impossibility of being an island even while depicting himself,like his characters, as a social outcast.

http://escholarship.org/http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8h50z8dfhttp://escholarship.org/uc/item/8h50z8dfhttp://uc/search?creator=Rowlins,%20Jameshttp://escholarship.org/uc/ucla_french_pg?volume=25;issue=1http://escholarship.org/uc/ucla_french_pg

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57

Michel Houellebecq: The Impossibility of Being an Island

__________________________________________________

James Rowlins

University of Southern California

Michel Houellebecq has positioned himself as one of

contemporary literatures foremost outsiders. Eschewing

mainstream French literati, his own readership, criticalreception, and the academy, he presents a striking example in

his novels of the paradoxes of literary singularity. As Murielle

Clment suggests in Houellebecq revisit , his work can be

characterized as une le impossible (104), or an impossible

island. This paper will explore key elements of his troubled

dialogue with the canon through questions of narrative

aesthetics and Humanist philosophy, with a focus on themanifold influences from literary history that impact his

prose. In particular, he borrows from the realist mode of

expression exemplified in nineteenth-century authors like

Balzac, in a return to pre-postmodern models and a brazen

rupture with contemporary literary theory. In reading

Houellebecq as a reactionary figure, I will suggest that his

island status relies on an archipelago of influence that

links his work to contemporary debates in French literary

circles, even as it attempts to isolate his writing from literary

criticism since poststructuralism.

Although Houellebecqs claims to island status can

certainly be traced to the author himself, the literary press has

been keen to fan the flames of a quixotic egotism by

permitting him to offer extensive treatises on his own

singularity. In an interview with Inrockuptibles , the author

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