Submission, Michel Houellebecq. What's the excitement?

Michel Houellebecq, France’s former enfant terrible, has written another good novel, Submission. However, it’s not the novel that critics blasted as Islamophobic. Clearly those people did not read the book. Perhaps a half dozen of the 246 pages in the novel even mention Islam. Based on the outraged blurbs, I was expecting some incendiary material, but it’s not there. I would instead blast the book for sometimes boring me witless with commentary on obscure French novelists! Of course, I am exaggerating. Houellebecq offers some profound insights on universal issues of our times, or perhaps of any time.

Most of the book is quite academic. The protagonist is a French literature prof whose specialty is a nineteenth century French novelist, J.K. Huysmans. Huysmans' work, life, and eventual conversion to Catholicism are discussed and pondered at great length. Have you read any Huysmans? Neither have I. Many pages of the book are devoted to descriptions of the mechanics of the French political parties and how they interact and create winners in elections by forming alliances. Most of this was lost on me and quite dull. The link between these two topics is the conceit of the novel. I don’t have to worry about spoilers, I’m sure everyone already knows the story. Through an unusual political alliance, a Muslim, a highly skilled politician, is elected President of France. This occurs close to the end of the novel. Now, let me share some of Houellebecq’s crazy descriptions of life in France under Sharia law...except that there aren’t any. There are a few pages in the last chapter that mention one Islamic practice that is common in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and much of Africa. Islamophobic? Hardly. He doesn’t even mention the pervasive human rights abuses that occur in those countries. The critics got us far off track from what he was writing about...

I soon began to appreciate the tapestry Houllebeq wove of Huysman’s conversion to Catholicism, the protagonist’s conversion to Islam on the last page of the book, and the real story of the novel: loneliness in middle-age, detachment, self-delusion, and disillusion. Key themes also are personal faith and a society living without faith.

Recent events in France were much more dramatic than these considerations. Recall that Houellebecq’s cartoon portrait was on the cover of Charlie Hebdo the day that jihadists massacred a dozen of his friends at the magazine. Michel now lives under police protection, although certainly it’s not needed for this novel. The French love to call Americans imperialists. However, it was France, with a population of 40 million at the time, that brutally subjugated 60 million people in colonies around the world. Many of  these countries gained their freedom through bloody civil wars, such as Algeria and Viet Nam, a.k.a French Indochina. So, there might be a perverse tie between this history and Houellebecq’s theme, although I’m not sure what he would think of my preceding observation. 

Submission is well worth reading, but not for all the inaccurate headlines. His previous novel, The Map and the Territory, has extraordinary writing about art, the gallery world, loneliness, and is not good, it's great. Comments on this novel are found in this blog.