Dialogues: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Karl Ove Knausgaard reviews Michel Houellebecq’s new novel

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/books/review/michel-houellebecqs-submission.html

Karl Ove Knausgaard reviews Michel Houellebecq's new novel:

"Before I begin this review, I have to make a small confession. I have never read Michel Houellebecq's books. This is odd, I concede, since Houellebecq is considered a great contemporary author, and one cannot be said to be keeping abreast of contemporary literature without reading his work. His books have been recommended to me ever since 1998, most often "The Elementary Particles," by one friend in particular, who says the same thing every time I see him. You have to read "The Elementary Particles," he tells me, it's awesome, the best book I've ever read. Several times I've been on the verge of heeding his advice, plucking "The Elementary Particles" from its place on my shelf and considering it for a while, though always returning it unread. The resistance to starting a book by Houellebecq is too great. I'm not entirely sure where it comes from, though I do have a suspicion, because the same thing goes for the films of Lars von Trier: When "Antichrist" came out I couldn't bring myself to see it, neither in the cinema nor at home on the DVD I eventually bought, which remains in its box unwatched. They're simply too good. What prevents me from reading Houellebecq and watching von Trier is a kind of envy — not that I begrudge them success, but by reading the books and watching the films I would be reminded of how excellent a work of art can be, and of how far beneath that level my own work is. Such a reminder, which can be crushing, is something I shield myself from by ignoring Houellebecq's books and von Trier's films. That may sound strange, and yet it can hardly be unusual. If you're a carpenter, for instance, and you keep hearing about the amazing work of another carpenter, you're not necessarily going to seek it out, because what would be the good of having it confirmed that there is a level of excellence to which you may never aspire? Better to close your eyes and carry on with your own work, pretending the master carpenter doesn't exist.

Houellebecq's name is so rich with associations — it has become one of those names in the arts that are replete with meaning; everyone knows who he is and what he writes about — that you may quite easily conduct a conversation with people about Houellebecq, even members of the literati, without anyone suspecting that you have never read a word he has written. In such conversations I have, for instance, said that I have "skimmed" Houellebecq, or else I have praised him for his courage, and in that way given the impression that of course I have read his work, without actually having to lie about it.

This was one reason I agreed to review Houellebecq's latest novel, "Submission," since then there would be no two ways about it, I'd have to force myself to read him. Another reason was the book's reception. As is now well known, "Submission" was first published on the same day as the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 innocent people were killed. Houellebecq himself was featured on the magazine's front page that week, and since he had once said in an interview that Islam was the stupidest of religions, and since Islam supposedly played such a prominent role in his latest book, his name immediately became associated with the massacre. The French prime minister announced that France was not Michel Houellebecq, was not a country of intolerance and hatred. Houellebecq was held up as a symbol of everything France was not, a symbol, indeed, of everything undesirable, and this in a situation in which human beings had been killed — one of Houellebecq's own friends among them, we later learned — so that it soon became impossible not to think of him and the killings together. He was, by virtue of having written a novel, connected with the murders, and this was affirmed by the highest level of authority. First of all I wondered how this must feel for him, to be made a symbol of baseness and evil at a time of such crisis, not only in France but all over the world, for Houellebecq is presumably just an ordinary guy who happens to spend his time writing novels as well as he can. What inhuman pressure he must be under, I thought to myself during those days. Or were his critics right in claiming that he was a cynical bastard seeking out the areas in which he knew he could cause most damage, in order to aggrandize his own name? The answer would lie in the novel, since you can't hide in a novel. Second, I wondered what exactly had taken place in France in the years since 1968, when Sartre was arrested during the May riots and President de Gaulle pardoned him with the declaration that "you don't arrest Voltaire." Conceptions of the writer's, the artist's, the intellectual's role in society, and of the value and function of free speech, must have altered radically during those 47 years. For surely Houellebecq's novel could not be so full of hatred and intolerance that it deserved to be excluded from the prime minister's vision of France as a tolerant society? Surely France could tolerate a novel?

All of these issues, from the slightly pathetic private ones to those of greater political and global dimension, seemed to converge in this book, "Submission," that had been sent to me in the mail, and that I now picked up and opened as I leaned back in my chair under the bright light of the lamp, lit a cigarette, poured myself a coffee and began to read.

"Through all the years of my sad youth Huysmans remained a companion, a faithful friend; never once did I doubt him, never once was I tempted to drop him or take up another subject; then, one afternoon in June 2007, after waiting and putting it off as long as I could, even slightly longer than was allowed, I defended my dissertation, 'Joris-Karl Huysmans: Out of the Tunnel,' before the jury of the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne." Karl Ove Knausgaard

Funmi Tofowomo Okelola

-In the absence of greatness, mediocrity thrives.

http://www.cafeafricana.com

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/bookwormlit