Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Refusing to grow up: on Banville on Houellebecq

I have yet to read Michel Houellebecq. This is because I asked a friend (with infallible judgement), who had, for an opinion. Shrugging his shoulders and turning his mouth down at the corners, he said: nothing special ... and when you have Thomas Bernhard

Ah yes, Thomas Bernhard: the funniest and, indeed, most readable literary iconoclast of European fiction. Odd, I’ve long thought, how the market for Houellebecq’s virulence and extremism doesn’t extend to Bernhard.

But maybe not so odd, I now think, having read John Banville’s Bookforum essay on the French writer, an essay that takes in Houellebecq's long essay on HP Lovecraft. It seems Lovecraft is the clue to why Bernhard’s name is not read close to Houellebecq’s (except here of course).

An ex-flatmate of mine owned a copy of Lovecraft’s stories. As he displayed special enthusiasm for this writer, I read one of them. I can’t remember the title but it reminded me of Borges’ The God’s Script. However, in comparison it was staggeringly poor. The writing was cringe-makingly florid, and the twist at the end was easier to guess than the one in The Sixth Sense. I mentioned all this to my flatmate, being more diplomatic about Lovecraft than I am here. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t move on to Borges.

In the essay on Lovecraft, Houellebecq’s mentions that he discovered the stories aged seven. He immersed himself in Lovecraft's world of fantasy. That rather indicates why my flatmate didn’t want to read Borges. It meant letting go of childhood naïvete and the innate, unrepeatable wonder of the world that it allows. Or rather, letting go of the nostalgia for this state. The story I read could have frightened only a seven-year-old. In Borges, fantasy is never unfettered, never innocent, and the pleasure it affords a colder heaven. A seven-year-old would most likely be non-plussed. Actually, so would my flatmate.

According to Banville's analysis and quotations, it does seem to me that Houellebecq is essentially a disillusioned Romantic – the child who resents growing up and stamps his feet as a result. The passages of extreme misanthropy are blatantly disingenuous ("For all the ferocity of his vision, Houellebecq does have a heart"). Whereas in Bernhard the narration is always subject to its itself, there is a self-satisfied arrogance in Houellebecq that refuses to be included under the terms of its observations.

Maybe the novels are more nuanced, though Banville - usually an acute critic - doesn’t bring this out. In fact, his essay is surprising for the vagueness of its praise and criticism. He says Houellebecq is darker than Beckett because he "would never allow himself, or us, those lyric transports that flickeringly illuminate the Beckettian night". If lyricism transports, then where does it take us? Somewhere nice, apparently. Yet there were transports from European cities in Beckett's time. So maybe it's not so straightforward with lyricism; perhaps that's what makes it lyrical.

Banville then uncritically quotes Houellebecq on Lovecraft: "There is something not really literary about [his] work." Yet what could be more literary in a writer than that?! Remember folks, if you can fake unliterary writing, you can make great literature!

Then later, referring to Houellebecq's court appearance over racial insults and incitement to religious hatred, he swipes at the "many French intellectuals [who] at best kept silent and at worst sided with Houellebecq's accusers". But he offers no names. Banville doesn't comment on Houellebecq's opinions and how they might be reddened by subsequent massacres of Muslims by Christians in Iraq in the last two years. Should we make of that any more than he makes of anonymous silent French intellectuals?

He also fails to mention any names again when laughing at 'critics' who ascribe Houellebecq's opinions to his peculiar upbringing (which Banville details, rather begging the question): "How simple and determined it must be, the life of the critic!" Indeed.

4 comments:

  1. " I can’t remember the title but it reminded me of Borges’ The God’s Script."

    I'm not surprised. Borges certainly did acknowledge Lovecraft as an influence.

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  2. Anonymous2:30 pm

    Reading Lovecraft To Borges.


    “Sometimes he’d make use of the readings for his own writing. His discovery of a
    ghost tiger in Kipling’s ‘The Guns of ‘Fore and ‘Aft,’ which he read shortly before
    Christmas, led him to compose one of his last stories, ‘Blue Tigers;’ Giovanni
    Papini’s ‘Two Images in a Pond’ inspired his ‘August 24, 1982,’ a date which was
    still in the future; his irritation with Lovecraft (whose stories he has me start and
    abandon half a dozen times) made him create a ‘corrected’ version of a Lovecraft
    story and publish it in Dr Brodie’s report. Often he’d ask me to write something down
    onthe endpaper pages of the book we were reading - a chapter reference or a thought.
    I don’t know how he made use of these, but the habit of speaking of a book behind its
    back became mine too”

    Alberto Manguel. ‘A History Of Reading.’ Page 18.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10:29 am

    i've waited a long time to be able to utter something like some of the things you say here. finally it happened. thank you, one of the mirrors of my own mind.

    ReplyDelete
  4. There is a slant in Banville's Lovecraft bits that amounts to lying. The real reason why Lovecraft moved back to Providence was that he couldn't find work in New York, no matter how hard he tried. The real reason why he and his wife separated (never actually divorced), was that his wife lost her work in New York and got work elsewhere while Lovecraft continued his efforts to find work in New York. There is no evidence of an otherwise unhappy marriage.

    You have misunderstood the comment that there is something not really literary about Lovecraft's work. I don't recall exactly what Houellebecq meant (something about its effect being unlike anything else in literature), and Banville is of no help, but I do recall that's not what he meant. Elsewhere in his piece, Houellebecq pointed out that if Lovecraft was a bad stylist, then all that can be said is that style doesn't matter (since his works are nevertheless so effective).

    As for Lovecraft never growing up - a common criticism that Banville's piece dabbles in - well that certainly sounds like a terrible thing, not growing up. Imagine being an adult but never having grown up! It sounds awful, whatever the hell it means. I hope, at least, that these critics aren't putting the average spectator-sports watching beer-drinking pleb and his "philosophy" and supposed maturity (I suspect "happy adjustment to the prevailing social expectations" is what is meant) above Lovecraft. Accusations like these are always suspiciously vague, like they were some sort of evolved reactions to protect social cohesion that had lost their meaning and original function in a modern technological society, especially when applied to people who actually do work and generate tax income for the State, like Houellebecq.

    So what is good about Lovecraft's best works, his late works? The one quality that most impresses me is their authenticity. It's a rare quality, and it's a rare reader who can appreciate or even notice it. I don't know exactly why that is, but I suspect it has something to do with homo sapiens having evolved to be a social bullshitting animal, basically always a dozen steps removed from any reality. (Probably why they can vaguely but with apparent seriousness accuse a genius like Lovecraft of "not growing up" and refusing to be like them, never giving a second thought to what they're actually trying to communicate or what argument, if any, they're trying to make.)

    ReplyDelete

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