Michel Houellebecq returns with his eighth novel. In anéantir [lit. “Destroy”] the author transports the reader to the reality of the 2027 presidential campaign, in order to touch upon themes of old age, death, euthanasia or the decline of the West in the atmosphere of a pessimistic political-metaphysical thriller. Through the ajar gates of Schopenhauerian pessimism, however, a spark of hope shines through.

Like every other book by this author, this one too has generated a considerable response in France, both in the traditional and social media. In the latter, the number of relevant hashtags testifies to the popularity among readers, the presence of the subject in the press, radio and television is more a testimony to the controversy surrounding the author, his position and achievements – disputes often of a political nature.

A white bourgeois’s last will?

For it must be remembered that in France, literature is a highly politicised domain. In fact, it is not so much literature itself as literary criticism which extends the domain of struggle, eagerly dividing authors according to political criteria and labelling them as “left-” or “right-wing” whenever it finds the slightest pretext for doing so – not only in their views or in the works themselves, but also in their critical reception.

There are, indeed, writers who are objectively far-right, such as Laurent Obertone and his post-apocalyptic Guerilla about the civil war in France, or far-left, such as Didier Daeninckx, whose novels are anti-fascist denunciations, but in most cases it is literary criticism that provides labels comme il faut.

In the case of Houellebecq’s new novel, it is no different. It was positively received in the centre-right Le Figaro, the right-wing Valeurs actuelles found the subject worthy of a cover story, while for the left-wing Marianne anéantir immediately became the whipping boy. Left-wing media reviewers exerted their cruelty over the novel by outdoing each other in inventing colourful formulas: “a testament to a white bourgeois detached from reality”, “a dream of a reactionary world where men have power over women and immigrants keep their heads down”, “the author bashes women, blacks, the working class, journalists”, “it’s not a far-right novel, it’s a novel that trivialises the far right”, etc.

And everyone was outdone by the website Médiapart, writing that anéantir is “a handbook for misogynistic old white men who can no longer get ‘it’ up”.

The marketing plan

Houellebecq made readers wait two years after his previous novel Serotonin. The new book was published in France on 7 January 2022, one day seven years after the bloody attack on “Charlie Hebdo”. Could it be that the publisher chose this date on purpose? The release of one of the writer’s previous novels, Submission, which deals with the Islamisation of France, coincided with this Islamist attack in 2015. It is known that Houellebecq, in deep shock at the time, abandoned the promotional tour and left Paris, having no desire to step into the shoes of a prophet whose darkest visions had unwittingly come true.

The promotional campaign for anéantir was meticulously planned according to a marketing plan. The publisher, Flammarion, carefully released small leaks to the press, as if from a drip, revealing bit by bit the volume of the first print run or the title, which was only revealed on 17 December.

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     The 600 journalists and critics who got their hands on the text of the novel were embargoed from revealing the contents until 30 December. The only thing missing was a bunker for the translators and we would almost have had the case of the last volume of the “Harry Potter” series.

The author himself actively participated in this project by giving his opinion on the paperweight, choosing the colour of the cover, supposedly inspired by The Beatles’ white album, and requesting that the title of the novel – “anéantir” meaning “to annihilate” – be written in lowercase.

A title without a capital letter, consisting only of the infinitive of a verb, as if taken out of an invisible sentence, looks as if it is suspended in a vacuum, linking an unknown subject to mysterious circumstances and opening up for the customer’s imagination before he even takes the book in hand.

“Only” 180 thousand

The book was published in a rather luxurious version, with a special unbreakable cover and a red ribbon as a bookmark. What is more, the format used is also unpopular, 1:1.60 close to the principles of the “golden ratio” in architecture and art. Apparently, the publisher wanted to make it similar in this way to the items published in the prestigious literary collection “La Pléïade”, and the author’s other novels are to be reissued in the same layout – three of them have come out so far. “Houellebecq wants to create his own Pleiade” – the mischievous comment. In any case, all these choices translate into a real increase in the cost of printing, a sign that the publisher did not doubt in the book’s success when ordering the first print run at an astronomical 300,000 copies.

Already after the premiere, the left-wing weekly L’Obs allowed itself a little Schadenfreude writing that the marketing operation had failed and rejoicing that Flammarion sold few, because “only” 180,000 in a month. “Few”, in a country where 1,000 copies sold is considered a literary success by authors and where publishers are able to offer reprints up to 50 copies?

As we have seen, the author’s real-world popularity bothers critics on the left, so much so that some wrote negative reviews before they had even received a presentation copy, and a little later in December, before the book had even been published, they cited in their reviews pirate sites from where one could download anéantir for free.

Talk about tying a tie

Is Houellebecq paying the price for Submission and politically incorrect opinions on Islam or progress? This is not the first time there have been accusations of his playing into the hands of the extreme right or his friendship with Erik Zemmour – real or existing only in the imagination of journalists, who report on the meeting of the two celebrities at a party in a certain Parisian club, where they talked about tying a tie, henceforth supposedly remaining in daily telephone contact with each other. Tying a tie in the company of a politically ostracised person is apparently not a neutral activity.

In the novel itself, Houellebecq mentions the right-wing candidate in the presidential election with a certain disinclination: “It’s true that the subject of Zemmour works reliably, you just have to say his name and the conversation begins to descend into entirely predictable and well-trodden paths, a bit like the subject of Georges Marchais at one time.”

The mere fact that the 65-year-old author invokes the figure of the 1980s French Communist Party Gen. Sec. already says quite a lot about his target audience, a generation of boomers reaping the benefits of the economic success of the Trente Glorieuses [France’s three decades of economic growth between 1945-75 – ed.], for whom the contrast with the current years of crisis can only come as a shock.

On the desk: photos of the minister and Trinity

Houellebecq set the action of his novel in an election year, and it was published a few months before the presidential campaign, only that he skipped one term. The novel is set not in 2022, but in 2026 and 2027, with the end of the second term of Emmanuel Macron in office (whose victory in the upcoming election is anticipated by the author, just like the writer Jan Oborniak in Stanisław Bareja’s “Zmiennicy” [“Subs”]), who is not mentioned by name, but is very easy to recognise, as the author refers to his profile, age and slogans (“start up nation”). As the constitution does not allow Macron to run for a third consecutive time, his finance minister Bruno Juge is running in the election.

It is an open secret that the prototype for the literary character is the real-life Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, privately a friend of the author. The realisation that he was featured in a novel by a bestselling writer inflated his ego to such an extent that he himself occasionally revealed tidbits from the novel to the media while it was still being written.

Those familiar with political life in France might be surprised: how could Bruno Le Maire, the real one, not the literary one, a completely colourless, flat and impersonal figure, win the friendship of a writer of this calibre? All the more so because Minister Bruno Juge, the literary one, not the real one, got a real laurel from Houellebecq: the best finance minister since Colbert, author of the French economic miracle, thanks to which the nation lives peacefully in prosperity and France overtakes Germany’s economy in 2026. Apparently, while writing the novel, Houellebecq had two photos on his desk: oh yes, one depicted his minister friend, the other is Trinity from The Matrix. But never mind that.

Cheat the constitution

The main protagonist of anéantir is Paul Raison, a high-ranking finance ministry official, trusted by the minister, assisting him in his race to the Elysée Palace. However, the more likely protagonist in the elections is a certain Sarfati, a talk show entertainer with a Sephardic name, just like the record-breaking TV presenter Cyril Hanouna, a kind of Kuba Wojewódzki from over the Seine, only more vulgar and simpering. It is obvious that the author has modelled this character on him.

Behind this is a clever ploy by the previous president (i.e. Macron, who has not been named): after Sarfati’s one term, he can run for election again. Macron therefore plans to cheat the constitution, just as Putin did by substituting Medvedev and then returning to the Kremlin.

The beginning of the campaign is exploited by mysterious cyber-terrorists who send out realistic videos of the virtual execution of a minister on a guillotine. Other supporting characters also appear: cynical journalists, slimy politicians, shady political agents… It is a behind-the-scenes look at the prevailing fallibility of democratic politics.

Separate shelves in the fridge

The world of Houellebecq’s new novel is, unsurprisingly, the same as in his previous bestsellers: darkness, decay, decline, gloom, hopelessness, etc., and in every domain: politics, private life, human relations, love, family, marriage. The tragical fate of the individual decided by modern society, the collapse of values, the trap of endless progress and modern ideologies seems inevitable.

Yet the novel’s purport is not entirely pessimistic this time. There are a few glimmers of grace and glimpses of hope here and there, like the possibility of an island of happiness in a sea of hopelessness, not strong enough to shatter the Houellbecq universe, but enough to raise questions about the author’s spiritual evolution.

Paul Raison is a typical Houllebecq protagonist: a white 40-year-old, well-off, married, childless, in crisis or even already past a relationship crisis. He and his wife have nothing in common other than a nice flat in Paris; they live together but separated in bed and at table, or rather in bed and in the fridge, in which each of them has a separate shelf.

However, it is in this emotional fallow ground that love will be reborn and germinate again, liberating the protagonist from the sexual precariat of African prostitutes and paid sex (one of the more shocking scenes is when the protagonist pays for oral sex and the street girl turns out to be his own niece).

The power of love

This element, too, has been an intrinsic Houellebecq motif from the very beginning of his oeuvre, starting with Whatever and The Elementary Particles, but here, for the first time, the curse of sexual poverty will be radically broken by the resurrection of feeling.

Here is an almost novelty in the author, already tentatively appearing in Serotonin: love and its soteriological power, which are omnipresent in this new novel in various threads. Paul finds the love of his wife; his widowed father, a former secret service agent after a heart attack, enters into a relationship with Madeleine, who not only gives him the opportunity to function in everyday life, but surrounds him with unconditional love despite class differences.

Aurélien, Paul’s younger brother, a victim of marital hell with a psychopathic left-wing journalist with whom he has a dark-skinned child bought from a surrogate in California, discovers love with the African nurse that is looking after his father. Cécile, their older sister, a faithful Catholic, has been married for many years to an unemployed notary public, a former activist on the right-wing, and is still in love with him with a simple everyday feeling, completely out of this cynical and despicable world.

These few bright spots allow us not to succumb completely to pessimism, even if the future of both anéantir and our real world appear in dark colours.

A pessimist disappointed

Another ubiquitous and parallel motif in the novel is death in its various guises: terrorism, ageing, suicide, incurable disease, the horrendous realities of nursing homes, etc. A dynamic symphony of amor, eros and thanatos – this is the explosive but harmonious leitmotif of anéantir.

Houellebecq presents himself here more as a disillusioned pessimist than a desperate one, as in his previous books. Pessimism is present, yes, but it is somehow less overwhelming, less disturbing and less nihilistic. Could it be that, with age, Houellebecq is leaning towards a new philosophy of life?

Some readers see Christian inspiration here. It is true that ubiquitous theological references can be detected in Houellebecq’s work, and his biblical and religious erudition is by far superior to the culture of his critics. He himself, who revealed in an interview a few years ago that he was shifting from an atheist to an agnostic position, is not one of those anticlerical ignoramuses that the French intelligentsia seethe with.

The Roman Catholic tradition is omnipresent in his work: when he quotes papal encyclicals such as Leo XIII’s “Rerum novarum”, when he writes about the distributism of Gilbert Keith Chersterton [British writer and convert to Catholicism – ed.] and Hilaire Belloc [historian and English Catholic writer of French origin – ed.], or repeats formulas taken directly from the Church’s magisterium e.g. “from conception to natural death”.

A Catholic writer?

As Vincent Lambert was being unplugged from his ventilator, Houellebeq wrote a completely non-literary text against euthanasia, bolder and harsher than if it had come from the pen of a Catholic philosopher or clergyman.

[Vincent Lambert, an accident victim, in a vegetative state, kept alive by artificial nutrition, became a media symbol of the fight for and against euthanasia. His parents defended him against disconnection, while his wife wanted him dead. After a long court conflict, he was sentenced to death by cessation of nutrition – author’s note].

The eminent Dominican Fr Olivier-Thomas Venard does not even hesitate to call the author “the last Catholic writer”. A shocking paradox? There is no denying that the sting of modern nihilism is omnipresent in his work, but it is not at all opposed to Christian intuitions. On the contrary, this nihilistic “bite of the soul and heart” is today fully part of the condition of believers exposed to contemporary society.

The point is not to give in to the sting, and given that Houellebecq still holds hope, like any Christian, it is impossible to exclude a Christian motivation in him. This great fan of Pascal, whom, by the way, he repeatedly invokes in anéantir, illustrates the “misery of man without God” according to the 17th-century writer’s formula. Houellebecq’s world is ashes, at least from the outside, but in these ashes there are still embers – and from a spark everything is possible.

The new Maurras?

When Houellebecq says: “I don't like Jesus. He unnecessarily subverts the society in which he lives. He is, in a way, a bit of a revolutionary”, what he dislikes is not so much Christ himself, whether historical or ecclesial, but rather the figure of the Jesus-revolutionary, as the Dominican explains. “Houellebecq poses a sharp question to the institutional Church: what did it make of Jesus, such that he is commonly reduced to a kind of May 1968 activist?”

O. Venard, an eminent intellectual, professor at many universities, including the Jerusalem Bible School, who began his ecclesiastical career in the Confraternity of St. Peter, always obedient to Rome but nurturing the pre-conciliar liturgy, notes that Houellebecq is influenced by French traditionalism, which tends to instrumentalise religion in the service of society. Would he be the new Charles Maurras [conservative French thinker, agnostic, supported Marshal Pétain during the Second World War, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1945 for collaborating with the Vichy government – ed.]?

In fact, in anéantir, Houellebecq writes that “liberal ideology stubbornly ignores social problems, filled with the naive belief that the desire for profit can replace every other human motivation and can provide the psychic energy necessary to sustain a complex social organisation”. Paul Raison seconds that claim, as knows that it “must collapse”. Is Christianity the missing link here?

An argument in favour of this utilitarianism could be the fact that Houellebecq already advocated at one time the recognition of Catholicism as the ruling religion in France, something that even the most radical traditionalists do not propose. According to him, this would help solve the problem of Muslim irredentism, because Muslims are prepared to accept that they will be a second religion in a Catholic state, but not that they will be one of many in a secular state.

Spiritual gems

If, therefore, he is not a Catholic writer, as Fr Venard suggests somewhat exaggeratedly, perhaps it is at least possible to discern “grains of truth” in him? Noticeable in the novel is an undoubted nostalgia for Catholicism and a search for spirituality. “If you reject God’s gift, He can do nothing for you” – he writes in anéantir.

The novel abounds in such spiritual gems. It turns out that the prayers of Cécile, the main character’s sister, a devout Catholic, have kept the Raison family united since her mother’s death. It is there, in the family home in Villié-Morgon, in the deep French countryside, far from the Parisian hell, that a rebirth can take place.

– Adam Gwiazda

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

– Translated by jz