Readers Place

Michel Houellebecq interview/review

Both books were immensely popular and immensely controversial on publication.  Pope said that Gulliver’s Travels was read ‘from the cabinet council to the nursery’, and Voltaire wrote to Swift to say ‘the more I read your works, the more I am ashamed of mine’. 

Dr Johnson conceded that ‘Swift … dictated the political opinions of the English nation’, whereas Lord Orrery said that ‘In this last part of his imaginary travels, Swift has indulged in a misanthropy that is intolerable.  The representation which he has given us of human nature must terrify, and even debase, the mind of the reader who views it.’   

Famed for its narrative power, it advanced the emergence of the novel as we now know it. Atomised sold 250,000 in its first three months, and has been translated into twenty-five languages.  ‘It was not so much published as detonated in Paris and the rows it provoked burst at once out of the review sections onto the front pages’ ( The Economist ). 

A figure who has always seemed to relish controversy, opinions of Houellebecq tend to be extreme.  Michelle Levy has written that he is ‘a sort of prophet…His books are there to help us to live and to understand.’   For Will Self, ‘He’s just a little guy who can’t get enough sex.’  While the Independent called the book ‘rich and provocative’, the New York Herald called it ‘deeply repugnant’, echoing Lord Orrery’s view of Gulliver’s Travels.

‘Makes you re-examine your beliefs… a brave and rather magnificent book’ Daily Telegraph

‘Bullying and brilliant…Nothing less than a road-rage map of our times’ Evening Standard

‘Sheer brilliance…totally mesmerising, energising, infuriating and moving… Compulsory reading’ Time Out

AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

Jonathan Swift

I have employd my time… in finishing correcting, amending, and Transcribing my Travels, in four parts Compleat newly Augmented, and intended for the press when the world shall deserve them, or rather when a Printer shall be found brave enough to venture his Eares…the chief end I propose to my self in all my labors is to vex the world rather than divert it, and if I could compass that designe without hurting my own person or Fortune I would be the Indefatigable writer you have ever seen…

I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes and all my love is towards individuals for instance I hate the tribe of Lawyers, but I love Councellor such a one, Judge such a one for so with Physicians – I will not Speak of my own Trade –  Soldiers, English, Scotch, French; and the rest but principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I hartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth. this is the system upon which I have governed my self many years (but do not tell) and so I shall go on till I have done with them…Upon this great foundation of Misanthropy…the whole building of my Travels is erected.

Taken from a letter by Swift to Alexander Pope , 29 September 1725

Jonathan Swift

I have employd my time… in finishing correcting, amending, and Transcribing my Travels, in four parts Compleat newly Augmented, and intended for the press when the world shall deserve them, or rather when a Printer shall be found brave enough to venture his Eares…the chief end I propose to my self in all my labors is to vex the world rather than divert it, and if I could compass that designe without hurting my own person or Fortune I would be the Indefatigable writer you have ever seen…

I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes and all my love is towards individuals for instance I hate the tribe of Lawyers, but I love Councellor such a one, Judge such a one for so with Physicians – I will not Speak of my own Trade –  Soldiers, English, Scotch, French; and the rest but principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I hartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth.

This is the system upon which I have governed my self many years (but do not tell) and so I shall go on till I have done with them…Upon this great foundation of Misanthropy…the whole building of my Travels is erected.

Taken from a letter by Swift to Alexander Pope, 29 September 1725

Michel Houellebecq

Houellebecq is a famously elusive interviewee, often appearing to be either bored with the questions or ignoring them altogether.  The following edited transcript of a Guardian interview with him in June 2000 touches upon aspects of Atomised :

I describe what happens to normal people – people whom nothing special happens to…Active people don’t change the world profoundly; ideas do. Napoleon is less important in world history than Jean-Jacques Rousseau… People don’t like the basic statement that not everyone succeeds in finding sexual satisfaction.

It seems a very banal proposition to me, but that’s what shocks people – the picture of losers in the sexual competition… A reactionary is someone who wants to return to a previous state – that’s never a possibility in my books. For me, everything’s irreversible in the life of a society, as well as an individual’s…

I don’t think politics is that important. Belief systems and technological revolutions are important, but I don’t think political decisions have the slightest effect on events…. Any groups with a strong ideology – communists or Catholics – will be split for and against me. That’s only normal. You couldn’t agree ideologically with the whole of Atomised … I’d much rather everyone agreed with me. But it’s not up to me to make a step towards others – it’s up to everyone else to come closer to me.