FT Books
Nov 18 2011
publish their six-month exchange of letters
Donald Morrison
"...Many thanks, M Houellebecq, for deftly explaining your motives, and the book’s title, in your first letter: “We have, as they say, nothing in common – except for one essential trait: we are both rather contemptible individuals.” Non-French readers might demur, given your friend Lévy’s three dozen, mostly erudite, books and his high-profile involvement in admirable causes from Bosnia to Libya. Or your own recent Prix Goncourt, France’s highest literary gong, for your novel The Map and the Territory.
In France, however, you are both widely reviled. M Lévy – can I call you BHL? Everyone else does – you are derided for your media-saturated, champagne-socialist lifestyle and the bespoke white shirts that expose much of your perpetually tanned, 63-year-old torso. As for you, M Houellebecq, your old-git grumpiness (after only 53 years on this earth) and your run-ins with Islam and women have won few French admirers. Reluctantly but correctly, you describe BHL’s image as “a philosopher without an original idea but with excellent contacts” and your own as a “nihilist, reactionary, cynic, racist, shameless misogynist ... an unremarkable author with no style”...more
"...Many thanks, M Houellebecq, for deftly explaining your motives, and the book’s title, in your first letter: “We have, as they say, nothing in common – except for one essential trait: we are both rather contemptible individuals.” Non-French readers might demur, given your friend Lévy’s three dozen, mostly erudite, books and his high-profile involvement in admirable causes from Bosnia to Libya. Or your own recent Prix Goncourt, France’s highest literary gong, for your novel The Map and the Territory.
In France, however, you are both widely reviled. M Lévy – can I call you BHL? Everyone else does – you are derided for your media-saturated, champagne-socialist lifestyle and the bespoke white shirts that expose much of your perpetually tanned, 63-year-old torso. As for you, M Houellebecq, your old-git grumpiness (after only 53 years on this earth) and your run-ins with Islam and women have won few French admirers. Reluctantly but correctly, you describe BHL’s image as “a philosopher without an original idea but with excellent contacts” and your own as a “nihilist, reactionary, cynic, racist, shameless misogynist ... an unremarkable author with no style”...more
Bernard Henri Levy and Michel Houellebecq
Random House, 2011
843 L668p