The Map and the Territory (original 2010; edition 2012)

As a longtime Houellebecq fan, THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY started off oddly - like a greatest hits album or a caricature. I kept hitting these familiar notes:

"It's no doubt through compassion that we imagine old people have a particularly good appetite, because we like to think that at least they have that left, when in the majority of cases the enjoyment of taste disappears irredeemably, along with the rest. Digestive problems and cancer remain."

"The image of the virile brute who is good in bed had been coming back in force recently, and it was indeed much more than a simple change in fashion; it was the return to the fundamentals of nature, of sexual attraction in its most elemental and brutal form."
I mean, I adore Houellebecq but this kind of misanthropy and sex-talk felt so familiar that I started wondering if the author was a little like the book's artist-narrator, Jed Martin, who muses to himself that there "was a sort of force that had carried him for a year or two but was now dissipating, crumbling," - if he'd lost the spark that made me believe Houellebecq was a genius, and not just a witty guy with a nasty vision of the world.

And then Houellebecq introduces himself as a character, and things started to change. At first I was suspicious of this, too; I thought of Milan Kundera, pictured a cute little cameo, and shrugged. But here's his first introduction onto the page -

"the author of The Elementary Particles came to open the door, wearing slippers, corduroy trousers, and a comfortable fleece of undyed wool. He looked long and pensively at Jed before turning his eyes to the lawn in a morose meditation that seemed habitual.

"I don't know how to use a lawnmower," he concluded. "I'm afraid of the blades cutting my fingers off; it seems to happen quite often. I could buy a sheep, but I don't like them. There's nothing more stupid than a sheep.""
And all of a sudden I was in. Because it was one thing to suspect that Houellebecq was making a mockery of himself with this book; it's another thing to know he's making a mockery of himself in the book, to see that he's in on the game and giving us a wink.

And then, a few pages further along, Houellebecq delivers the most Houellebecq-ian diatribe imaginable, I mean:
"I once tried to stay here [in Ireland] the whole spring and summer and thought I would die. Every evening, I was on the brink of suicide, with this night that never fell. Since then, at the beginning of April, I go to Thailand and stay there until the end of August. Day starts at six and ends at six, it's simpler, equatorial and administrative. It's unbearably hot, but the air conditioning works well and it's the dead season for tourists. The brothels are empty, but they're still open and that suits me fine; the service remains excellent or very good."
And then Jed Martin says, "Now I have the slight impression you're playing you're own role..."

And then Houellebecq says, "Yes, that's true," and I was...boggled and in stitches and finally, finally I realized that yes, Houellbecq has done it again. Because usually I read Houellebecq despite the fact that every one of his past books left me in a state of cynical disillusionment, hating all humanity and wondering, Eeyore-like, why bother about anything ever. THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY is playful and, at times, almost bubbly - it made me laugh. It was really fun.

Houellebecq always seems to be writing books about himself - or, at least, I've always interpreted them that way - especially the sad-sack writer in THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES and the clown in THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND who can't tolerate his own success. THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY presents us with a visual artist - Jed Martin - and Houellebecq himself. Both of them, in different ways, seem very much at peace with their own artistic output. They do good work. They triumph even after the world has forgotten them, or seemed to forget. They are not worldly.

As much as I've admired Houellebecq, this is the first time I'd apply the adjective "mature" to one of his novels.

THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY contains a lot of mini-essays; discussion about artists, writers, architects that go on longer than I'd tolerate from most any other author. But I enjoyed them here, and it made sense for a book that includes the author as a character - always, by the way, always introduced as, "the author of..." - to be so explicit and deliberate. It felt fitting, and right, when THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY ended like every other Houellebecq novel.

I loved THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY. I recommend it to readers who've never tried Houellebecq before, but I especially recommend it to fans. He did us proud with this one. ( )

Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles remains the last book by a new author that completely impressed me, and I read that in 2000. Houellebecq's unique synthesis of vulgarity, pathos, mockery and sublimity thoroughly captured the moment for me. It was the last time I felt something genuinely new. (James Wood's recent review in the New Yorker, where he negatively re-evaluated Houellebecq's original famed novel, struck me as, well, missing the point.)

I haven't really loved any of Houellebecq's novels since then. This new one, however, is much more satisfying. It's more sober stylistically, and certainly less savage overall--one might even say sympathetic--but it's still droll and devilish in the best ways. His use of italics for dead or overused metaphors and cliches is especially delicious. He plays around with their obviousness, yet shows how they still do the trick.

If you're interested in the art world or crime fiction, these elements are featured, and generally with interesting results.

I wouldn't call The Map and the Territory great. I'd call it entertaining, interesting and, at times, beautiful. I'm sure I'll read it again at some point. Which is more than I can say for most other new novels I've come across. I'd say it's a good read. ( )

A strangely fascinating tale in which the author Michel Houellebecq places himself as a fictitious, or possibly real, character in the life story of artist Jed Martin. A French artists with a decidely anglophone name if that is significant. Who knows? A simply told story of an artist made good in the style of Damien Hirst. With little emotion where lots would be expected when M. Martin splits with a beautiful girlfriend, when his father commits euthanasia and when his distant friend M. Houellebecq is brutally murdered in an original, art inspired fashion. Full of stylistic quirks such as a fascination with inserting real and precise street addresses tempting you to look them up on Google Street View to see if you can spot the characters and get a better sense of their life. Thought provoking but possibly in the same empty sense as Mr Hirst's art. ( )

This is a masculine, intellectual, and somewhat cold book which centers on an artist’s rise to fame. There are two other prominent characters – one of them Houellebecq himself – who are creators, and they all have an aura of solitude and detachment about them. They are above the masses, while at the same time creating architecture, art, or literature for them.

The descriptions of the artistic process and the fictional artwork are interesting, and I particularly enjoyed reading about the painting Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology, subtitled The Conversation at Palo Alto.

On the other hand, Houellebecq’s insertion of himself in the plot didn’t work for me; he repeatedly referred to himself as the author of (fill in the blank with a past book) which quickly began to feel like an in-book advertisement, and I rolled my eyes when he described his absence as having “increased the mediocrity in the world”. Hoo boy, no ego there.

The book is also proudly French: there is sadness over the shifting shift in French culture, joy for the cuisine and wine, staunch adherence to French-isms (not Gigabytes, Gigaoctets folks), and also some obligatory lip curling over Americans (e.g. “he smiled with that cretinous enthusiasm and optimism which is difficult for non-Americans to counterfeit”).

The writing does flow throughout the book and it held my attention, but the events of part three are disjoint and a bit of a letdown, though I will not spoil it here. Let’s just say a mystery unfolds, the conclusion of which is somewhat ho-hum, despite attempts by Houellebecq to liven it up with some random and gruesome violence.

There is a bleakness here, with lives ending in increasing isolation and struggle. Despite creations which elevate them spiritually and achievements which allow for materialistic creature comforts, ultimately, the book reminds us of Hobbes, “the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Quotes:
On being an artist:
“…to be an artist, in his view, was above all to be someone submissive. Someone who submitted himself to mysterious, unpredictable messages, that you would be led, for want of a better word and in the absence of any religious belief, to describe as intuitions, messages which nonetheless commanded you in an imperious and categorical manner, without leaving the slightest possibility of escape – except by losing any notion of integrity and self-respect.”

On death:
“Here was a man who, with dynamism and sometimes harshness, had led a firm of about fifty people, who’d had to hire and fire, who’d negotiated contracts involving tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of francs. But the approach of death makes you humble, and he seemed above all to want to avoid trouble; that was apparently his only ambition now on this earth.”

On goodbye, quoted from Joe Dassin’s “Hello Lovers”:
“We loved like we leave each other
Simply, with no thought of tomorrow,
Tomorrow that comes a little too fast,
Of farewells that come a little too easy.”

On life, and work:
“From what he had been able to observe, the existence of men was organized around work, which occupied most of life, and took place in organizations of variable dimension. At the end of the years of work opened a briefer period, marked by the development pathologies. Moreover, some human beings, during the most active period of their lives, tried to associate in micro-groups called families, with the aim of reproducing the species; but these attempts, most often, came to a sudden end, for reasons linked the ‘nature of the times’…”

And:
“What defines a man? What’s the question you first ask a man, when you want to find out about him? In some societies, you ask him first if he’s married, if he has children; in our society, we ask first what his profession is. It’s his place in the productive process, and not his status as reproducer, that above all defines Western man.”

On lost love:
“…Olga loved him, he repeated to himself with a growing sadness as he also realized that nothing would ever happen between them again; life sometimes offers you a chance, he thought, but when you are too cowardly or too indecisive to seize it life takes the cards away; there is a moment for doing things and entering a possible happiness, and this moment lasts a few days, sometimes a few weeks or even a few months, but it happens once and one time only, and if you want to return to it later it’s quite simply impossible.”

On old age:
“Aging, and especially apparent aging, is in no respect a continuous process. Life could rather be characterized as a succession of levels, separated by sudden falls. When we meet someone we have lost sight of for some years, we sometimes have the impression that he has aged; sometimes, on the other hand, that he hasn’t aged at all. This is a complete fallacy, since decay is still secretly making its way inside the organism before bursting out into the broad daylight.”

On priests:
“They took the Metro alongside other men, going from a Gospels-reading group to a literacy workshop, saying mass every morning for a thin and aging audience, being forbidden all sensual joy or even the elementary pleasures of family life, yet obliged by their function to display day after day an unwavering optimism. … Humble and penniless, sneered at by everyone, subjected to all the problems of urban life without having access to any of its pleasures, young urban priests constituted, for those who did not share their faith, a puzzling and inaccessible subject.”

On women:
“And it’s that, above all, that women are looking for. If they can read in the eyes of a man an energy, a passion, then they find him attractive.” ( )

This is the first book I've ever read where the author of the book has himself murdered! I loved that approach. Plus he uses a lot of real life personalities in the book who are probably famous in France, but I didn't know who they were. So I read this book alongside my computer so that I could search online for them and find out who they were. I also enjoyed using Google street view to see the streets his characters were walking down and the places they went. I especially enjoyed his tip for the best view of Notre Dame. C'est vrai!

I wish I could have found the paintings and photographs referred to online, but of course they were all fictitious. Nevertheless, I enjoyed imagining what they looked like from the author's clear description.

The characters in the book were also clearly drawn and three dimensional (maybe even four dimensional!), and I hated to say goodbye to them at the end of the book.

Fascinating story. I will look forward to reading more from this author. Maybe I will even try reading him in the original French. ( )