Hugh Graham concludes his exploration of Houellebecq’s dessicated terrain with the Stoic imperative to “bear up and do without”. PART THREE: THE INDIVIDUAL Every revival of philosophy begins with the individual. Today the individual, lulled by pop wisdom and popular culture, has little awareness of what it means to be one’s self outside of cultural […]
Philosophy in Rags: The Present Augustan Age: Houellebecq and Gnosticism
In the second of three parts, Hugh Graham examines the theme of atomization in Houellebecq’s novels, finding bad conscience in good intentions and fatal contradictions in the biometrics of happiness. PART TWO: THE PRESENT AUGUSTAN AGE A desert landscape flattened by positivism, by the belief that everything begins and ends in mechanics, forces and particles, […]
Philosophy in Rags: Rigour for a Dying World: Houellebecq and Gnosticism
In the first of three parts, Hugh Graham looks through the prism of Houellebecq’s novels and finds a Gnostic theme for our times. Deserts creep and sea-levels rise. Populations expand and resources are depleted amid poverty, wealth, and intractable war. Under these lowering skies it seems astonishing that we live in a world void of […]
Elementarteilchen – the film of Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised :
James McConalogue Atomised – Michel Houellebecq See all books by Michel Houellebecq at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Elementarteilchen DVD This film is terrifyingly humbling, sexually polite and bravely mundane in its philosophical exploration of the fragility pervading human love. It is packed with the warmth of the everyday trials of love and passion. This film, directed […]
Michel Houellebecq: The Possibility Of An Island
James McConalogue The Possibility Of An Island – Michel Houellebecq See all books by Michel Houellebecq at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com “The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A figure in transition toward chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear.” – M. Houellebecq, The Guardian, 2005. As […]
Michel Houellebecq: Lanzarote
Pedro Blas Gonzalez Lanzarote – Michel Houellebecq See all books by Michel Houellebecq at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Lanzarote is a colorful vignette that describes the scope of meaninglessness in an apocalyptic age. Even the landscape – the lunar aridity of this Spanish island where the action takes place – is scarred by volcanic activity. Whether […]
Michel Houellebecq – Atomised
Kevin Walsh Michel Houellebecq is one of those authors who inspire hugely conflicting reactions. Some hail him as a literary giant in the European tradition, deftly weaving philosophy, history, and science into his bleak, challenging narratives, asking those questions that other more commercially-minded authors shy away from. Others think him hollow, pretentious, showily didactic and […]
