After scandalizing the sensible citizens of the Seine, Michel Houellebecq’s novel of the days to come has reached translation to our American shores to burn my eyes with its sex and its death and its frustrated attempts to jerk a little more life out of the last days of mankind.
That being said, I don’t think that this novel has an ax to grind. Conservatives on both sides of the pond hated it’s porno-licious portrayals of various turpitudinous attempts at transcendence. (Fucking to forget, as it were.) Liberals were outraged that Michel would implicate a sensible Continental love-the-one-you’re-with modernity with all that is crass and despairing and destructive and — heaven forbid! — American.
But it seemed he was just stating facts. The book is riddled with science: Biology, Evolution, Chemistry, Physics — all forces just a wee bit bigger than any one man or even one ideology. These forces march on and have their own mysterious ends, we are merely swept along for the ride. As a man lives and dies, so does a culture, so does an epoch, so does an era. In the first pages, Houellebecq makes the sweeping statement that just as the Roman Empire was undone by the Christian era, so the Christian era — and it’s moral code — is now being undone by the rise of Modern Science, the latest “metaphysical mutation.”
His characters have been born at the wrong time: Now. Plagued by Anxiety, Depression, Dissatisfaction, Suicide Slow, Suicide Quick, they float about like Elementary Particles, unable to latch on and bond in a necessary order to build a future, a family, a community. Without purpose they are indeed unbearably light in their being.
However, the book is more than a pocket-sized pulp soap opera. It’s also got a sci-fi twist! (Fear not, its more Margret Atwood then H.G. Wells.)
Yes, the Brave New World is at hand. Huxley is proven right. He saw the future, and now we see that it was not birthed out of fear, but by our own desires. Our desire to divorce sex from reproduction. Our desire to find happiness in a pill. The schema of Organized Religion made life bearable for two millennia. But now the comforting chains have started to crack thanks to the Darwins and the Curries and the Freuds and the Fords of this world. Now we are selfishly working towards the next big thing, and shattered lives and shredded psyches are the price.
A doctor I met last summer echoed some of these thoughts. I was freaking out and went in for some meds, something I had always considered weak, cowardly, shameful, and downright anti-Christian up to that moment. I asked him why so many of my friends — mostly college educated, middle class, i-pod owning types – are on the pills. He said that he’s pretty sure we’re not equipped to handle things the way they are: Cars, constant media, etc. Too Much, Too Fast. He said either we’re heading for an apocalypse or a great leap forward in our evolution. But that’s just his professional opinion. He was sticking to the comfort of his hard-working, latin-loving, Cleveland Catholicism and seemed to be doing ok. But wasn’t as sure about his grandkids.
Will the Houellebecq prophecy come true? Will it all work out for the rest of us in some grand New World Order? We shall see, but I guarantee that Pfizer has a Soma division down some dark hall. Eventually it will be time to turn the lights on.
