The Chemistry Between Us

[dotinthesky]

Michel Houellebecq, Atomised, 1998
Reading this novel is the equivalent of finding yourself playing an American backpacker in the movie Hostel, with Dolly the Sheep your only salvation from the torture factory. Hundreds of pages of horrifying, tortuous, bleak, sad, pessimistic, depressing fiction (interspersed with a few glimpses of a palpitating heart) culminate in one glimmer of hope.

The novel is about two half-brothers and their different quests for an understanding of love and an escape from modern life's Nihilism. In between the pornography and misanthropy there are meditations on the history of Western Civilization thought, with the sharpest barbs reserved for organised religion and devouts of the Sadean school of living.

As far as I know, Houellebecq's hatred for Islam first rears its head in Atomised. Years later, charges were brought against him for insighting racial hatred in his novel Platform. A court of law found him non-guilty. All I can say, based on Atomised, is that it's a work of fiction and if we are going to start judging every author by what their characters say, we might as well throw Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice or C.J. Lines' Filth Kiss into the bonfire. After all, the character that calls Islam "stupid" in Atomised happens to be one of the saddest, most desperate human beings in the history of literature.

Comments

[naturalbornkaos.livejournal.com]

A book-burning could be a good publicity stunt actually!

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Would you like me to organise something for Birmingham?

[suede.livejournal.com]

I havent read Atomised yet, but have read other 3 books by him and I love his writing.
Lanzarote was quite a bore, but Platform and Whatever were ace. Whatever being my fave by him at the moment. I want to read Atomised because I have been told its the most houllebecquian of them all XD

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

He has a new book out, which takes off where Atomised ended. I was intellectually stimulated by Atomised, but I don't know if I would actually call it "enjoyment" what his fiction produces in me...

[suede.livejournal.com]

Yes the island one.
Maybe its just that i am too used to read depressive and perssimistic books XD

Anyway if you want to read another book by him, try Whatever!

[gorecky22.livejournal.com]

Finally I know wich Houllebecq book is Atomised. In Spain it was titled as "Las partículas elementales" (The Elemental Particules, I guess). I read it when I was 18 and it became one of my favourite books ever. I have to add that it's still one of my favourite books ever. I found fascinating some of the thoughts in the book (about pain, society or communication).

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought the ideas in it were very interesting. Perhaps my only criticism is that they seem, at times, to be skimmed over rather than dealt with in detail. But they do add up to a powerful punch, especially when his "solution" in the end is revealed.