Name: Sarah E's review of Submission by Michel Houellebecq
Item: Submission
Rating: 2
Author: Sarah E

Michel Houellebecq

As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National’s alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator François – misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated – life is set on a new course. Submission is a devastating satire, comic and melancholy by turns, and a profound meditation on faith and meaning in Western society.

Submission

A controversial, intelligent, and mordantly funny new novel from France's most famous living literary figure. It's 2022. François is bored. He's a middle-aged lecturer at the New Sorbonne University and an expert on J. K. Huysmans, the famous nineteenth-century Decadent author. But François's own decadence is considerably smaller in scale. He sleeps with his students, eats microwave dinners, rereads Huysmans, queues up YouPorn. Meanwhile, it's election season. And although Francois feels "about as political as a bath towel," things are getting pretty interesting. In an alliance with the Socialists, France's new Islamic party sweeps to power. Islamic law comes into force. Women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged, and François is offered an irresistible academic advancement--on the condition that he convert to Islam. Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker has said of Submission that "Houellebecq is not merely a satirist but--more unusually--a sincere satirist, genuinely saddened by the absurdities of history and the madnesses of mankind." Michel Houellebecq's new book may be satirical and melancholic, but it is also hilarious, a comic masterpiece by one of France's great novelists.

A Novel

The lack of curiosity displayed by journalists really was a blessing for intellectuals: all of these articles were easily accessible on the web, and in certain cases, it seemed to me, would have been worth the trouble of digging up. But I may have been wrong; over the course of the twentieth century plenty of intellectuals had supported Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot and had never been taken to task. For the French, an intellectual didn't have to be responsible. That wasn't his job.

...nostalgia has nothing to do with aesthetics, it's not even connected to happy memories. We feel nostalgia for a place simply because we've lived there, whether we lived well or badly scarcely matters. The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our companion between two infinities of happiness and peace.

It came as a profound shock when I realised that some of the sexual specialities offered by 'Mademoiselle Hortense' were completely unknown to me. I had no idea what a 'voyage through the yellow land' or a 'Russian imperial soap' could possibly mean. Certain sexual practices had vanished from human memory, in one century – not unlike certain forms of skilled labour, such as cobbling or bell-ringing. How could anyone argue that Europe wasn't in decline?

I told Brother Pierre that the room would be fine, but I already knew that wasn't true. In En route, when Huysmans debates - more or less interminably - whether he can stand monastic life, one of his negative arguments is that, apparently, they wouldn't let him smoke indoors. Moments like that have always made me love him.

There's another passage where he writes that one of the few pure joys in life is getting into bed with a stack of good books and a packet of tobacco. Huysmans never had to deal with smoke detectors.

He trusted that I would have a very pleasant stay: it was so peaceful, and the meals were delicious. As he said it, I realised that he was expressing not just a belief, but a hope, because he was one of those people, and you don't see them every day, who take an instinctive pleasure in the happiness of their fellow men - that he was, in other words, nice.

To maintain order in your bureaucratic life, you more or less have to stay home; go away for any length of time and you're always likely to run foul of some agency or other.

Or maybe I was just hungry. I'd forgotten to eat the day before, and possibly what I should do was go back to my hotel and sit down to a few ducks' legs instead of falling down between the pews in an attack of mystical hypoglycaemia.

At least I had managed to leave Paris, at least I'd made it as far as the Lot, I told myself as I contemplated the branches of the chestnuts lightly tossing in the breeze. I knew the hardest part was behind me: in the beginning, the solitary traveller meets with scorn, even hostility. Then, little by little, people get used to him, whether they're hoteliers or restaurateurs, and dismiss him as a harmless eccentric.

As soon as we hung up, I was overwhelmed by a terrible loneliness, and I knew that I'd never have the courage to call Myriam again. The feeling of closeness when we talked on the phone was too violent, and the void that came afterwards too cruel.

If Myriam had been with me, I'd still have had no good reason for being in Martel, yet the question simply wouldn't have arisen. A couple is a world, autonomous and enclosed, that moves through the larger world essentially untouched; on my own, I was full of chips and cracks. 

Motorways are never crowded on Sunday morning. That's the moment when society takes a deep breath and decongests, when its members give themselves the brief illusion of an individual existence.

I knew next to nothing about the south-west, really, only that it was a region where they ate duck confit, and duck confit struck me as incompatible with civil war. Though of course, I could be wrong.

Microwave dinners were reliably bland, but their colourful, happy packaging represented real progress compared with the heavy tribulations of Huysmans' heroes. There was no malice in them, and one's sense of participating in a collective experience, disappointing but egalitarian, smoothed the way to a partial acceptance.

Alice watched us with the affectionate, slightly mocking look that women get when they witness a conversation between men - that odd ritual, that is neither buggery nor duel, but something inbetween.

My afternoon seminar was exhausting. Doctoral students tended to be exhausting. For them it was all just starting to mean something, and for me nothing mattered except which Indian dinner I'd microwave (Chicken Biryani? Chicken Tikka Masala? Chicken Rogan Josh?) while I watched the political talk shows on France 2.

Some of the videos were superb (shot by a crew from Los Angeles, complete with a lighting designer, cameramen and cinematographer), some were wretched but 'vintage' (German amateurs), and all were based on the same few crowd-pleasing scenarios.

Ian Mason

Sarah E

Katie Chua

my first houellebecq, won't be my last. idk i liked this and i'm trying to still parse out why because i actually couldn't tell if this was satire or not and if he's being *too* reactionary or what. i think some of the stuff he proposed actually felt legitimate, but i think i mainly liked this because it made me think.

Donald

What a hateful, hilarious novel.

The funniest thing about Submission is that it's not about Islam. Houellebecq doesn't seem to care or know about Islam at all. It's an object of reactionary fantasy (order, patriarchy, etc)... but even the fantasy is more puerile than reactionary. Islam is equated with high salaries and submissive (young) wives. An adolescent fantasy. It's hard to know if Houellebecq has more disdain for men or women.

Any pundit who reads this book as original or insightful commentary on "the West and Islam" is a moron. In some ways, the goal of the book is to mock such commentary.

The plot is just so silly. The collapse of European civilization described is real, not imagined, but the collapse of Arab civilization has been much faster and more extreme. The decadence and nihilism of the Saudi or Qatari elites make their European counterparts look good in comparison. And the collapse in birth rates is even worse in places like Iran than it is in France. The longterm financial picture for Saudi Arabia is not good, and starvation was a major problem in Syria before the civil war started. Etc etc.

The problems in European liberal democracies are real, but however bad it gets, the problems in the Arab autocracies are much worse. Houellebecq isn't stupid. He knows this, and that's why the Islamist fantasy in Submission is so lacking in detail about politics/economics... and so focused on the erotic possibilities of polygamy.

In a near-future France, Fran�ois, a middle-aged academic, is watching his life slowly dwindle to nothing. His sex drive is diminished, his parents are dead, and his lifelong obsession - the ideas and works of the nineteenth-century novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans - has led him nowhere. In a late-capitalist society where consumerism has become the new religion, Fran�ois is spiritually barren, but seeking to fill the vacuum of his existence. And he is not alone. As the 2022 Presidential election approaches, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and Muhammed Ben Abbes of the nascent Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the mainstream parties, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for Fran�ois, life is set on a new course. Submission is both a devastating satire and a profound meditation on isolation, faith and love. It is a startling new work by one of the most provocative and prescient novelists of today.

Diana Platgalve

Good read on sexual/social failure of finding fulfilment and European self destruction.

Ronas K

Only a book that Houellebecq can write. Insanely well done. It is difficult not to read into it various agendas and hidden messages, when the main plot-device is the electoral takeover of France by a Muslim party bankrolled by the Saudi government. But you have to get past the point of searching for Houellebecq's intentions for the book to truly open up and become an enjoyable read.

Pim Van

A book with potential, but it just didn't work at the end. At least not for me. Too many loose ends and cut corners. I pity that as the book had some great writing by Houellebecq in it as well and the topic has great potential.

In a near-future France, François, a middle-aged academic, is watching his life slowly dwindle to nothing. His sex drive is diminished, his parents are dead, and his lifelong obsession – the ideas and works of the nineteenth-century novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans – has led him nowhere. In a late-capitalist society where consumerism has become the new religion, François is spiritually barren, but seeking to fill the vacuum of his existence. And he is not alone. As the 2022 Presidential election approaches, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and Muhammed Ben Abbes of the nascent Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the mainstream parties, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for François, life is set on a new course. Submission is both a devastating satire and a profound meditation on isolation, faith and love. It is a startling new work by one of the most provocative and prescient novelists of today.

Artas Bartas

Submission is a thought-provoking book. Many a critic will rush to accuse it of spewing Islamophobia, objectifying women, and caricaturing the ideals of Enlightenment. And to some extent, they will be right because the writings of Michel Houellebecq tend to evoke the world where the cornerstone values of the Western middle classes - be it sexual monogamy, human rights, or democratic government - crumble under the weight of internal contradictions and external pressures. The rise of the Muslim government imposing Islamic law on the French society is just the latest variation of the same formula. 

The alt-right movement and casual racists might hail Submission as a book that dares to speak "the truth," but the story of creeping Islamization works only as long as Houellebecq chooses to gloss over the glaring contradictions of the Arab societies (the Sunni-Shia divide anyone?), equate liberalism with social alienation, and proclaim Christianity a spent spiritual movement, to mention just a few, most obvious caricatures. All this makes one wonder, what *is* the real story of the Houellebecq's book? 

Arnold Toynbee once noted that civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. Seen this way, the real tragedy lies not in covert Islamization or the fact that political life comes to be dominated by the National Front and the Muslim Brotherhood, the two parties united by their "rejection of atheism and humanism." No, these developments are only possible when mainstream political parties completely and utterly fail in their task of governing. Fail to enact economic policies benefiting the working class, fail to talk about moral issues publicly, fail to foster local communities and tackle crime, and fail to integrate ethnic and religious minorities into society at large. 

If you accept this interpretation, the next question to ask is where lie the roots of this failure. To Houellebecq, it has to do with liberalism and its emphasis on personal freedom, which leads to the atomization of society and alienation of its members. Other critics might say that the real culprit is not liberalism, but the electoral process that favors candidates with deep pockets and media-savvy advisors over those with fresh ideas and deep commitment to their communities. Remaining an optimist, I think the situation is not so bleak - with the right type of leadership, the liberal values and existing institutions can produce fairer policies and more inclusive governance. 

In the end, the reason why I read Houellebecq is because his books never fail to provoke one to think about the big questions.

Francis Wilson

Philipp

Landen Angeline

As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National's alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator Fran�ois - misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated - life is set on a new course. Submission is a devastating satire, comic and melancholy by turns, and a profound meditation on faith and meaning in Western society.

Ian Mason &
Submission by Michel Houellebecq

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