By dint of considering Michel Houellebecq as the more or less outrageous barometer of French society in our time and in the near future, his novels are expected like the Messiah. All the more so since a formidably effective marketing precedes each spawning. The release of his anticipation novel Submission, in 2015, in a France that had become Muslim land, had it not coincided with the Islamist attack on the premises of Charlie hebdo ? Oracle, Houellebecq? Not always, but a top-flight agitator and analyst capable of dazzling as much as of cookie-cutter provocations.
Annihilate, the eighth novel of the “goncourisé” for The map and the territory, landed in Quebec bookstores. This uneven brick of 735 pages, which only finds its cruising speed at the 150e, does it fly towards success with us? Less than in France, in any case. Its action, anchored in 2027, also ignores the pandemic as a vector of social upheaval. Thus, in this fiction, the author offered himself one less key to grasping the world of tomorrow, while placing medical issues at the center of his melancholy satire.
The polemicist has shorter teeth than yesterday. Is it bad? He can be so obnoxious. We suddenly discover him more human, without seeing him put away his ambitions. His crystal ball shows him, through his alter ego, a wounded France (and the West, by extension), in need of balms. How to contradict him on this?
No doubt he sees himself as a contemporary Balzac. He quotes his illustrious predecessor a lot in this novel. In the footsteps of the author of Human comedy, who had auscultated his company between Paris and the province from 1829 to 1850, Houellebecq brandished his seismograph in the same France, but in the 21st century: almost two hundred years later. Lost illusions, by Balzac, was of a cynicism that the contemporary novelist struggles to beat in the whole of his work, however sulphurous. Black humor connects these writers beyond their time bubbles and their respective styles. The parentage is real. With the clothes of the giant Balzac, very large to put on, we can sense Houellebecq’s project to follow in his footsteps. Already meritorious, this ambition to listen to its time, even if it means getting caught up here and there in its laces. Through the mixture of kinds ofAnnihilate – thriller, social and family chronicle, creaking comedy -, Houellebecq knots several intrigues. Leaving aside the segment of political suspense, but why? His eternal existential malaise is nourished here by tests of health undergone by the main character of disillusioned civil servant as by his close relations. Sending back to back fundamentalists of all persuasions, the ambient mediocrity, the benevolence of caregivers and a woman he is learning to love again, the writer gropes his way.
Annihilate embraces the quest for transcendence of a hero sorry for not believing in any god when the going gets tough. Here is a Houellebecq softer than usual, less catchy, less sarcastic, but still convinced that the world is on the way to ruin. He distills his nostalgia, hits the political class, institutions of all stripes and the media, but with a velvet glove. Its misogyny and xenophobia are losing in virulence. We have been changed.
This twilight novel, where disease and death lead the way, where threats of mass destruction are born on the Web before striking, aspires to tenderness and reconciliations. His best passages are the most amorous. Supernate the gestures of gentleness which, failing to prevent disaster, make life bearable. Appeased, Houellebecq? In any case stripped of his sword and his armor, thrown at his feet while undressing. Maturity has entered his body with death lurking around him. His contempt has died down. No doubt he especially learned to support himself. The devil who has become old becomes a monk (or a hermit, it is according to), say the proverbs.
The writer inhales the zeitgeist by clinging less firmly to the buoy of an ancient world to be preserved at all costs. We share some of his thoughts by dropping out elsewhere. This lame novel nevertheless becomes its most solar. As if Houellebecq saw that all the polarizations of today, drunk with excess, would soon hit a wall. We no longer speak of the extension of the field of struggle, but of that of kindness, the only one capable of assisting humans in Annihilate. Balzac came to the same conclusions in more religious times. France has not changed completely in two centuries, but its steed is racing and its landmarks are crumbling, as elsewhere. No wonder his famous oracle is so tired.