THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
By Michel Houellebecq
Translated from the French
By Frank Wynne
Knopf. 264 pp. $25
A little over a hundred years ago, Tolstoy shocked the reading public with his novella The Kreutzer Sonata, a brutally frank denunciation of the mating habits of the upper classes. Michel Houellebecq's Elementary Particles, which at one point features a character reading The Kreutzer Sonata, sent similar shock waves through Europe after its publication two years ago. Though undoubtedly provocative and intriguing, it is unlikely to have the same effect here. In Europe public literary controversies still exist, whereas here a novel will make the news only if there are some political ramifications (as with Rushdie's Satanic Verses) or a tantalizing question of authorship (as with Primary Colors). The Elementary Particles has the added disadvantage of being so extreme in its views that it will be repugnant to most readers.
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The novel is an account of two half-brothers coming of age in the '70s and finding a world that has lost its sense of community, morality and purpose. Instead of regarding the '60s as a time of liberation, of the rejection of hypocrisy, repression and conformity, Houellebecq -- like many reactionaries here as well as in France -- considers the '60s a disaster, when community was rejected in favor of rampant individualism and morality thrown out the window along with constricting ties and bras. The legacy of the French student revolt of 1968 and hippies dancing in the mud at Woodstock is the soulless, immoral, consumer society we now live in -- a thesis so ludicrous that Houellebecq needs to go to extremes to defend it.
Share this articleShareHis two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno Djerzinski, were born to a beatnik mother who was too flaky to stick with one father, and who shipped the kids off to different grandmothers so that she could fly to California and join the burgeoning hippie movement in the early '60s. Bruno was sexually molested by his fellow students in primary school and grows up to be a sexual maniac who eventually winds up in an institution. Michel, a quiet, emotionless nerd, becomes a molecular biologist who makes revolutionary discoveries in cloning and paves the way for the brave new world of eugenics portrayed in the closing pages of the novel (which are set 80 years from now). Most of the people surrounding the brothers are so unhappy with the world bequeathed to them by those irresponsible hippies that they resort to suicide.
Instead of calling for a return to pre-'60s morality, as many conservatives do, Houellebecq (pronounced well-beck) looks to the future for a paradigm shift that would do away with the inefficient mechanics of sexual reproduction and alter the genetic code to create a race of perfect beings who have overcome "the forces of egotism, cruelty and anger" that drive our current civilization. Sexuality, which plays a major part in this novel -- Bruno's escapades in nudist colonies and swingers' clubs are especially graphic -- would be transformed into an activity divorced from reproduction. Tolstoy's solution to the sex drive was abstinence: Just say nyet. Houellebecq's equally naive solution is to extend the sensitivity of the genitals via genetic engineering "to cover the entirety of the epidermis, offering new and undreamed-of erotic possibilities." Sounds like something a sex-crazed hippie would come up with.
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Despite its daft ideas, The Elementary Particles is a fascinating read, aided by an exceptionally smooth translation by Frank Wynne. Like our own Richard Powers and Rebecca Goldstein, Houellebecq makes extensive use of scientific knowledge in his fiction, often with unsettling results. The death of a character will be followed by a detailed scientific account of the putrefaction of corpses, and another character's act of aggression will inspire an aside on hierarchical structures in animal societies. In Houellebecq's view, we are not a little lower than the angels, as the Bible flatters us, but merely a little higher than the animals, and he gives enough evidence to substantiate this hard truth. In the sections dealing with Michel, there are extensive discussions of quantum physics, molecular biology and the typology of meiosis, along with casual references to such things as the EPR paradox and Griffiths's Consistent Histories. Prepare to be challenged.
Houellebecq brings impressive erudition and a gutsy willingness to offend to his attempt to re-think and re-imagine the bases for civilization, an ambitious task most novelists would shrink from and which earns our respect, no matter how sharply we might disagree with him. Like Huxley's Brave New World, which is cited in The Elementary Particles and obviously influenced it, Houellebecq's novel is equally fascinating and repugnant, the kind of mutant gene that keeps the evolution of the novel interesting. *
Steven Moore is the author of several books and essays on contemporary fiction.
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