{"id":119920,"date":"2022-05-25T11:03:51","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T16:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=119920"},"modified":"2026-06-10T09:36:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:36:30","slug":"book-reviews-by-conor-hultman-interventions-2020-by-michel-houellebecq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/book-reviews-by-conor-hultman-interventions-2020-by-michel-houellebecq\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Reviews by Conor Hultman: “Interventions 2020,” by Michel Houellebecq"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Interventions 2020<\/em>
by Michel Houellebecq
Polity Press ($25)
Available to order at Square Books<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Michel Houellebecq<\/strong>, probably the most popular and controversial novelist in France today, had a new novel, An\u00e9antir<\/strong> <\/em>(\u201cDestroy\u201d), come out in January. I can\u2019t read it, because it is in French. If you, like me, want to read something new by the world\u2019s most titillating pessimist since Schopenhauer, and if you, like me, cannot read French, I have good news. Polity Press<\/strong> has just published a career-spanning collection of Houellebecq\u2019s essays in English.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interventions 2020<\/strong> <\/em>puts together interviews, essays, encomiums, and vitriolics starting from the early \u201890s when Houllebecq\u2019s first book of poetry was published, up until 2020 with COVID. You will read Houellebecq\u2019s opinions on\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Silent movies: \u201c…it was not just an investigation of human feelings; not just a survey of\u00a0the movements of the world; its deepest ambition was to constitute an inquiry in the\u00a0conditions of perception\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cloning: \u201cOf course, I\u2019ll get myself cloned as soon as possible; of course, everyone will\u00a0be cloned as soon as possible\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading: \u201cToday I read my contemporaries a little less, I reread more \u2013 that\u2019s normal,\u00a0I\u2019m getting old. I now know that I\u2019ll read until the end of my days \u2013 maybe I\u2019ll stop\u00a0smoking, obviously I\u2019ll stop making love, and the conversations of men will gradually\u00a0lost its interest for me; but I can\u2019t imagine myself without a book\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mortality: \u201cin reality there\u2019s no harmony with the universe. In moments of happiness, by\u00a0example when contemplating a beautiful landscape, I instantly know that I\u2019m not part of\u00a0it, the world appears to me as something strange, I don\u2019t know of any place where I can\u00a0feel at home\u2026.Unlike most people I don\u2019t fear death\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science fiction: \u201cIn view of the extraordinary and shameful mediocrity of the \u2018human\u00a0sciences\u2019 in the twentieth century, and in view of the progress made during the same\u00a0period by the exact sciences and technology, one might expect that the most brilliant and\u00a0most inventive literature of the period was science fiction; and this is indeed what we\u00a0observe\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Neil Young: \u201cHis most beautiful records are undoubtedly those that oscillate\u00a0between sadness, loneliness, daydreaming and peaceful happiness\u2026.Neil Young\u2019s songs\u00a0are made for those who are often unhappy, lonely, approaching the gateways of despair\u2014but who continue to believe happiness is possible\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also included are Houllebecq\u2019s takes on fellow French writers and political figures, as well as the baffling essay on Trump (\u201cDonald Trump is a good president\u201d) that had his fans across the world scratching their heads. For the Houllebecq reader, the best revelatory information presented is perhaps that Houllebecq is not the extreme nihilist that most of his protagonists are; Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Beigbeder<\/strong> confronts him as \u201can almost Christian romantic moralist who everyone thinks of as a decadent nihilist and atheist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those just getting into Michel Houllebecq, I think these essays are a good place to get acquainted with that voice, acidic, pitiless, but too full of humor and awareness to shy from. Be warned: his novels are worlds almost too bleak to live in. And some critics are concerned that they are <\/em>becoming our world.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interventions 2020by Michel HouellebecqPolity Press ($25)Available to order at Square Books Michel Houellebecq, probably the most popular and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123467,"featured_media":117396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Book Reviews by Conor Hultman: \"Interventions 2020,\" by Michel Houellebecq","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35029],"tags":[6480,20523,21509,21507,21508],"class_list":["post-119920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eat-in-oxford","tag-book-review","tag-conor-hultman","tag-french","tag-interventions-2020","tag-michel-houellebecq"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/2022-02-03-Book-Reviews.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161376,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119920\/revisions\/161376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}