The Elementary Particles Hardcover – 1 Oct 2000

When I read the shrill reviews from the uptight liberals at the New York Times, I knew this book had to be good. I was right. The Elementary Particles is the story of two half-brothers in post-1960s France. When their hippy mother runs off to a New Age community in California, the two boys are sent to live with different sets of grandparents. The boys grow up in a world infected by the ideas of the 1960s revolution. The highest values are American ones: radical individualism, sexual liberation, and self-expression. The bonds holding people together have been eroded as France is mercilessly (and tragically) Americanized. Every facet of life has been reduced to crude, radical competition. The law of the jungle prevails. The two brothers react to this sad new world in interesting ways. Bruno -- a teacher, failed writer, and chronic masturbator -- embarks on a life of endless searching for love but becomes obsessed with pornography, sex clubs, cyber sex, and nudist holiday camps; he molests one of his female students. Michel, a scientist, withdraws from the world, unable to love; he devotes all his time to biology and genetics research. Their superficially different reactions bely the fact that they suffer from the same modern disease which manifests itself in an inability to love, self-absorption, and an absence of meaningful social interactions. There is no larger community in this world; just a bunch of atomized human beings -- elementary particles -- that occasionally bump into one another for sex. They are adrift in a decadent West unaware of its own rapid decline. Bruno and Michel ultimately choose similar ways to deal with their sad fate. This book is a timely indictment of the social, sexual, economic, and technological upheavals in the West since the 1960s. This may help explain why Houellebecq has been so viciously denounced by the liberal and conservative establishment, not only in France but also in America. Speaking truth to power makes enemies. As a much-needed critique of a global society dominated by liberal, consumerist American values this is a very important work. But as a deconstruction of that society it is only the beginning. It is also entertaining and hilarious, if at times needlessly graphic. I recommend it.

First, a quote from Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy," the spirit of which I'd swear animates this novel...
"...An old legend has it that King Midas hunted a long time in the woods for the wise Silenus, companion of Dionysos, without being able to catch him. When he had finally caught him the king asked him what he considered man's greatest good. The daemon remained sullen and uncommunicative until finally, forced by the king, he broke into a shrill laugh and spoke: "Ephemeral wretch, begotten by accident and toil, why do you force me to tell you what it would be your greatest boon not to hear? What would be best for you is quite beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best is to die soon."
Ok- here's the deal. Either you go in for the bleak, unredemptive, unflinching view of humanity and existence, or you don't. I loved this book. It cut me to the bone and I was glad for it. Houellebecq takes apart our desires, our dreams, our age, all our petty cultural trappings- and exposes them for the broken props that they are. Even The sci-fi bookends of the novel didn't grate too badly, though it ended abruptly.
Houellebecq presents a worldview that only a scabrous, self-hating continental intellectual could craft so well. And thank Doug for that! This is a nihilistic work of highest caliber, a descendant of Celine (though H's misanthropy and nihilism aren't the same strain of gleeful, musical hate as Celine's), Hamsun and Huysmans. So be warned, all is not roses and puppy dogs. Humanity, nature, the world in which we live are reviled in a variety of insights, characters and plotlines, none of which end happily. Incidentally, Celine is even channelled, you might say, in the novel, when Bruno, sickened and humiliated by his own powerlessness attempts to publish some racist tracts in a journal, a la everyone's favorite fascist of the 30's.
Both of the main characters (Bruno and Michel) are offered chances at making a good life for themselves, despite their failings as humans... Both are given a chance at happiness, or, perhaps a bovine contentment... I'll let you find for yourself what happens.
Now, Even if you disagree with any of the perceptions and theories presented in this vitriolic little book, it is still a good thing for you to be exposed to them, as it can only result in you holding your own views with a larger frame of mind. I found this book to be a much needed dose of cold, bathos-sterilizing refreshment. Ah!

I agree with the reviewer who said that reading this book was sort of like taking a particularly bitter pill. I sacrificed any chances of a good mood for the week I spent reading this book. I was haunted by the images of physical decay, moral corruption, and sexual perversity that Houellebecq so starkly portrays. The more I read, the clearer it became to me that most writers publishing in America don't dare to tackle big ideas. However flawed The Elementary Particles might be, the fact that Houellebecq confronts not only scientific progress and philosophical schools of thought, but also death, sickness, gender and sex in the most universal sense, shows such courage and vision that I can't help thinking this novel is genius. The glimmer of hope offered by the cryptic last pages ("the future is feminine") actually does lift away some of the bleakness, without taking away from the overall seriousness. Houellebecq also has a grim sense of humor that I enjoyed. I'm not surprised this hasn't received more attention in the U.S. I wish that weren't true. Maybe then American writers (or more precisely, American publishers) might find the courage to compete with this guy. The bar has been raised.

I started reading this book almost a year ago and got through the first 2/3 very quickly; then something strange happened: I was so depressed by the contents of it, the constant pointless sex, the graphic descriptions, the callousness and emptiness of the characters and the emptiness of their shallow lives that--despite knowing that all this was deliberate by Houllebecq, that it was his razor-sharp deconstruction and commentary on the modern Western lifestyle--I was just not able to continue, until two days ago, when, with nothing else to do, I picked it up off my bookshelf and started from where I'd left off. The hiatus worked wonders and I whizzed through the remainder of the book, enthralled and riveted, although at times disgusted too, and full of admiration.

This is a difficult book but a necessary one and, I have no hesitation in now saying, a brilliant one. The book is full of some extraordinary ideas and incisive commentary on humanity in the late 20th century, especially that of European society. The ending--it goes into (very plausible) hard science fiction territory--the erudition of the writer, his eye for detail, and his twin obsessions of sex and violence, and his ability to be brave enough to write what he sees without any thought for political correctness or any of the other sops of the liberal left, is breathtaking and--despite the ocassional Islamophobia, nay contempt he portrays for organised religion but Islam in particular, his racism, makes this book essential reading especially after the tragic events of 9/11 and those in London on 7/7 and after. This book has more important and accurate things to say about the human condition of contemporary European man than any number of the dry academic essays on sociology and anthroplogy you can care to read. Understand Houllebecq and you understand what people nowadays really care about and think. I don't think I'd like the man but to ignore him and what he is saying would be to do so at our own peril. I haven't read a book full of such big and radical ideas for a long time.

Michel Houllebecqs books are bundles of extremely confused emotions. The one recurring voice is the one of the lonely young man who is obsessed with sex - but usually can't manage to get a girl. In The Elementary Particles he is called Bruno, and his quest for the ultimate sexual kick makes up most of the book's narration. His half brother Michel is unable to enjoy sex or to feel love. He is a biologist who manages to lay the foundations of a new race of feminine creatures who are produced in laboratories and end up replacing the flawed humanity. (Actually this last bit is the one that shocked readers in Europe.)
Houellebecq offers a disgusted and polemic view of our civilisation. Much of the time he seems to project his disgust with himself into the whole world. The voice of his books is the one of a hopeless romantic who adores motherly love - but who always ends up masturbating. He is obsessed with sex, he is appalled by this obsession - and consequently dreams up a world without any sex at all. It sounds a bit adolescent, doesn't it? Houellebecq is excellent at portraying the depressing details of loneliness and desolation, but as a thinker and a novelist he is so far below even Camus that I couldn't help feeling depressed at the intellectual level to which the most intellectually precise literature of the world has sunk.
In spite of all this, I do not think that he can be dismissed as easily as that. At least he does try to think about questions which most people dare not even raise. In Europe you cannot go to a party without ending up discussing Houellebecq - and it is good to have him point out the loose ends of our culture which might end up strangling it.