(Paris) The French writer Michel Houellebecq oscillates between depression and contrition in his first autobiographical account, where he poses as the victim of a director of Dutch pornographic films… and of himself.
A few months in my life, October 2022-March 2023, which appears Wednesday at Flammarion editions, is a text apart in the work of one of the most famous French-speaking authors in the world. Because, for once, this is not fiction.
One could speculate to what extent the youth of Michel Houellebecq was found in Elementary particles or her marital bliss in Serotonin.
Here, there is no ambiguity. The author spreads, in nearly 100 pages, six months which he describes as catastrophic for his reputation and his mental health. “I truly entered hell. I am still there today,” he wrote.
The French press received the book variously before its release.
The Sunday newspaper saw in it a “lucid analysis”, while Le Figaro found the writer “intractable with himself and determined not to get caught up in dirty business dealings”. These two titles have obtained interviews with the author, who rarely grants any.
more critical, Point detected “a sometimes Celinian register” where “the wound oozes on each page”, and The Express is surprised by peremptory assertions, given “the number of scenes which are so many blanks in the author’s memory”.
The Obs in turn denounced a “whining, indecent” book.
Apologies to Muslims
Two cases punctuated these six months. First the Islamophobic remarks in the review Popular Frontthen the unexpected episode of the pornographic film Kirac 27.
In both cases, Michel Houellebecq says he is a victim, first of all, of his own stupidity or naivety, but also of the greed of those who exploit his notoriety.
The novelist admits to having damaged his image without earning a single penny.
“I had reached, on a personal level, the near perfection of bullshit,” he notes of his inability to get paid for the very long interview with French philosopher Michel Onfray published in December. Since the issue sold well, “according to my agent, my loss of earnings amounted to approximately 225,000 euros” ($328,000).
But worse, he reproaches himself for not having understood, by re-reading the interview, that he was crossing the yellow line with his imprecations on the Muslims of France and violence.
“I apologize to any Muslims that this text may have offended — that is, I’m afraid, pretty much all Muslims,” he says in his book.
Returned to his most virulent remarks, and eager to have the number of Popular Front in question, he did not succeed.
Insults
Just as he was unable to have the contract signed in December with the filmmaker Stefan Ruitenbeek canceled before the courts. In the translation that Michel Houellebecq shows readers, we discover that he agreed to act… for free.
Kirac 27not yet released due to the legal dispute in the Netherlands, should be made of bits of filming in Paris and Amsterdam, under the watchful eye of a director nicknamed by the author “the Cockroach”, with actresses who he designates as “the Sow” and “the Turkey”.
On dozens of pages, the author, Prix Goncourt 2010, spreads insults against them.
Relatives assured him that the media would move on. “Pretty much everyone was wrong; this porn movie would never be forgotten,” laments the novelist.
“The idea that these images could be broadcast against my will, I felt, for the first time, something that seemed to me to be similar to what women victims of rape describe,” he adds.
This comparison follows a passage where the writer, regularly accused of misogyny, explains that, if feminists hate him, he “doesn’t like them either”.