The Elementary Particles
Michel Houllebecq
Review by Alexandra Marla Montejo
source: The Complete review, "The Elementary Particles", n.d.
Much of the novel shows how horrible and empty modern life is. It centers on two half-brothers, the prominent scientist Michel Djerzinski and hapless teacher Bruno. They are children of broken homes and a broken society, floundering about, looking for a purpose. Bruno wallows in sex: often in self abuse -- the most appropriate term -- as well as many other (generally unsatisfactory) variations. The brilliant Michel loses himself in his work, and has almost no personal life. Michel walks away from his work for a time, to take a year off to "think", but in the end turns back to it, losing himself completely in it.
Houellebecq's novel is a curious but largely successful mix of description and philosophizing. The year of Michel's sabbatical frames most of the novel, though there are many scenes and accounts from earlier in Bruno and Michel's lives, showing how they got to where they are and who they became.
Bruno and Michel are not really representative of the society Houellebecq attacks, though they can be seen as extreme consequences of it. Bruno's childhood and adolescence is miserable -- "his entire adolescence was a disaster" -- while Michel survives by isolating himself, his life almost entirely cerebral. School life is intolerable (beyond pure academics, into which Michel retreats) and all the boys wretches. (Teenage boys are consistently portrayed as the lowest form of life; "there's nothing more stupid, hateful or obnoxious than a teenage boy", Houellebecq insists throughout the book.) Matters are not helped by Bruno's and Michel's indifferent parents: for some time the adults don't even realize the half-brother are attending the same school.
Bruno is consumed by sex from the time he first becomes aware of it, but there is little pleasure to go with it. His life continues to be sordid and pathetic, "a melodrama where the characters were babes and dogs, hot guys and bitches." There is lots of sex, but there is almost nothing to it. Most of the time those involved seem merely to be going through the motions, because it is the thing to. Bruno actually marries and has a child, but the marriage naturally fails and his relationship with his son also looks doomed.
Meanwhile, Michel continues to live what is basically "a purely intellectual existence", without love and without even much friendship.
In some of the most curious scenes in this novel Houellebecq disposes of these two women. As if readers hadn't gotten the message yet that sex is generally not a good thing in modern society Houellebecq uses the two to show what it can lead to. They are not quite literally f••ked to death, but Houellebecq manages outcomes near as horrible. The simplistic ends are then predictable as they both take the inevitable (if not necessarily honourable) way out. Men take the brunt of Houellebecq's attacks as he blames them for almost everything, but in contemporary society he finds women's identities so closely tied to their role as sexual partner and mother that if they are incapable of filling these roles they see themselves as having no further purpose -- a point not handled with much finesse here.
Bruno is praising Brave New World ("Brave New World is our idea of heaven", he convincingly suggests), and Houellebecq clearly wants his book be considered in much the same light. He also has Michel point out to Bruno that Aldous Huxley took all his ideas from Julian Huxley's 1931 book, What Dare I Think ?, grounding it more solidly in scientific reality. Throughout The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq is at pains to point out the scientific basis of many of his own claims, leading to odd (but also oddly fascinating) asides.
Houellebecq's novel is a curious but largely successful mix of description and philosophizing. The year of Michel's sabbatical frames most of the novel, though there are many scenes and accounts from earlier in Bruno and Michel's lives, showing how they got to where they are and who they became.
Bruno and Michel are not really representative of the society Houellebecq attacks, though they can be seen as extreme consequences of it. Bruno's childhood and adolescence is miserable -- "his entire adolescence was a disaster" -- while Michel survives by isolating himself, his life almost entirely cerebral. School life is intolerable (beyond pure academics, into which Michel retreats) and all the boys wretches. (Teenage boys are consistently portrayed as the lowest form of life; "there's nothing more stupid, hateful or obnoxious than a teenage boy", Houellebecq insists throughout the book.) Matters are not helped by Bruno's and Michel's indifferent parents: for some time the adults don't even realize the half-brother are attending the same school.
Bruno is consumed by sex from the time he first becomes aware of it, but there is little pleasure to go with it. His life continues to be sordid and pathetic, "a melodrama where the characters were babes and dogs, hot guys and bitches." There is lots of sex, but there is almost nothing to it. Most of the time those involved seem merely to be going through the motions, because it is the thing to. Bruno actually marries and has a child, but the marriage naturally fails and his relationship with his son also looks doomed.
Meanwhile, Michel continues to live what is basically "a purely intellectual existence", without love and without even much friendship.
In some of the most curious scenes in this novel Houellebecq disposes of these two women. As if readers hadn't gotten the message yet that sex is generally not a good thing in modern society Houellebecq uses the two to show what it can lead to. They are not quite literally f••ked to death, but Houellebecq manages outcomes near as horrible. The simplistic ends are then predictable as they both take the inevitable (if not necessarily honourable) way out. Men take the brunt of Houellebecq's attacks as he blames them for almost everything, but in contemporary society he finds women's identities so closely tied to their role as sexual partner and mother that if they are incapable of filling these roles they see themselves as having no further purpose -- a point not handled with much finesse here.
Bruno is praising Brave New World ("Brave New World is our idea of heaven", he convincingly suggests), and Houellebecq clearly wants his book be considered in much the same light. He also has Michel point out to Bruno that Aldous Huxley took all his ideas from Julian Huxley's 1931 book, What Dare I Think ?, grounding it more solidly in scientific reality. Throughout The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq is at pains to point out the scientific basis of many of his own claims, leading to odd (but also oddly fascinating) asides.