Whatever

By Michel Houellebecq

Just thirty, with a well-paid job, no love life and a terrible attitude, the anti-hero of this grim, funny novel smokes four packs of cigarettes a day and writes weird animal stories in his spare time. A computer programmer by day, he is tolerably content, until he's packed off with a colleague - the sexually-frustrated Raphael Tisserand - to train provincial civil servants in the use of a new computer system

Houellebecq's first novel was a smash hit in France, expressing the misanthropic voice of a generation. Like A Confederacy of Dunces, Houellebecq's bitter, sarcastic and exasperated narrator vociferously expresses his frustration and disgust with the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Release date: May 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781847651617

Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq (1958) es poeta, ensayista y novelista, «la primera star literaria desde Sartre», según se escribió en Le Nouvel Observateur. Su primera novela, Ampliación del campo de batalla (1994), ganó el Premio Flore y fue muy bien recibida por la crítica española. En mayo de 1998 recibió el Premio Nacional de las Letras, otorgado por el Ministerio de Cultura francés. Su segunda novela, Las partículas elementales (Premio Novembre, Premio de los lectores de Les Inrockuptibles y mejor libro del año según la revista Lire), fue muy celebrada y polémica, igual que Plataforma. Houellebecq obtuvo el Premio Goncourt con El mapa y el territorio, que se tradujo en treinta y seis países, abordó el espinoso tema de la islamización de la sociedad europea en Sumisión y volvió a levantar ampollas con Serotonina. Las seis novelas han sido publicadas por Anagrama, al igual que H. P. Lovecraft, Lanzarote, El mundo como supermercado, Enemigos públicos, Intervenciones, En presencia de Schopenhauer, Más intervenciones y los libros de poemas Sobrevivir, El sentido de la lucha, La búsqueda de la felicidad, Renacimiento (reunidos en el tomo Poesía) y Configuración de la última orilla. Houellebecq ha sido galardonado también con el prestigioso Premio IMPAC (2002), el Schopenhauer (2004) y, en España, el Leteo (2005).

Book preview

The work of forty-year-old Michel Houellebecq, novelist, poet, essayist, and co-founder of the influential magazine Perpendiculaire, has provided the catalyst for a disaffected and caustic group of young French writers who have been hailed as the most exciting literary phenomenon since the nouveau roman. Following the enormous success of Whatever- now being made into a film - Houellebecq has published a second novel, Les particules élémentaires, and a collection of essays, Interventions. He is a winner of the Grand prix national de lettres and the Prix Flore for Whatever.

This book is supported by the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess Programme headed for the French Embassy in London by the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni.

WHATEVER

A NOVEL

MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ

Translated by Paul Hammond

Introduced by Toby Litt

A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request

The right of Michel Houellebecq to be identified as the author of

this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988

Copyright © Maurice Nadeau 1994

Translation copyright © Paul Hammond 1998

Introduction copyright © Toby Litt 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the publisher.

First published in France as Extension du domaine de la lutte in 1994 by

Editions Maurice Nadeau

First published in this edition in 2011 by Serpent’s Tail

First published in 1998 by Serpent’s Tail,

an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

3A Exmouth House

Pine Street

London EC1R 0JH

website: www.serpentstail.com

ISBN 978 1 84668 784 6

eISBN 978 1 84765 161 7

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

INTRODUCTION BY TOBY LITT

The novel is lazy. As a form. It hates work. As a subject. More specifically, it hates workers. As subjects. People who go to work. More specifically still, it hates office workers. Does that mean you? You’re not an office worker, are you? Then I’m sorry. I don’t mean I’m sorry that you’re an office worker. (Although I am. Profoundly.) No, I’m sorry the novel, as a form, hates you, as a subject. On behalf of the novel – particularly on behalf of this novel – I apologize. It’s not nice to be hated, is it? It makes you feel bad. So I’m sorry. Michel Houellebecq isn’t sorry. He hates you a lot more than I do. He really fucking hates you. And he’s not going to apologize for that. Because he hates what you and all the other office workers are doing to the novel. Because he hates the kind of lives you and all the other office workers are leading. Because he hates what you and all the other office workers are doing to life itself. You might take comfort from the fact that Michel Houellebecq also hates the novel, hates himself, the world and just about everything in it. He’s a famous hater. He’s a famous hater partly because he’s very good at it and partly because he’s French. And there’s nothing people love to hate more than a French hater. His first book, published in 1991, was about the then-unfashionable writer H.P. Lovecraft. H.P. Lovecraft, who has since become painfully fashionable. This book’s full title was H.P. Lovecraft: Contre Le Monde, Contre La Vie. In English that’s the less elegantly snarling Against the World, Against Life. With obvious admiration, and clear agreement, the young Houellebecq quoted Lovecraft: ‘I am so beastly tired of mankind and the world that nothing can interest me unless it contains a couple of murders on each page or deals with the horrors unnameable and unaccountable that leer down from the external universes.’The tone of Whatever is exactly this, ‘beastly tired’. It is a resolutely desultory novel about a resolutely desultory part of a resolutely desultory life. The life of Our Hero, a male thirty-year-old office worker. As such, as an example of resolution, it is an artistic triumph. Because of what it stops itself doing. Because, even more, of what it doesn’t really seem tempted to want to do in the first place. Which is seek any way out of or around or beyond the desultoriness. Houellebecq holds himself back from Lovecraft’s ‘horrors unnameable and unaccountable’. Houellebecq’s horrors are all too nameable. His horrors are wearyingly accountable. Some of his horrors are accountants. Whatever is a novel that sticks to the world as given, not the world as conveniently distorted for literary novelists or pleasingly distorted for reading-group readers. If you’re looking for a sympathetic main character, fuck off. If you’re in search of page-turning plot- twistiness, fuck off. If you’re hoping for redemption in the final paragraph, fuck off. What you’re going to get here is what the original French title promises: Extension de domaine de la lutte. That is, An Extension of the Domain of the Struggle. What does this mean? What struggle? Like George Orwell’s 1984, Whatever is a novel that interrupts itself halfway through to hawk up a chunk of partially digested socio-political theory. Orwell’s is called The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Houellebecq’s is called Dialogues Between a Dachshund and a Poodle. Houellebecq’s thesis comes down to a one-liner: ‘Sexuality is a system of social hierarchy.’ Later on, he expands on this: ‘Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization.’ And here we arrive at the original title, as it occurs in the body of the novel: ‘Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.’ If Whatever has a plot, it is about Our Hero’s attempt to deal with one of the absolute sexual paupers of our day – Raphaël Tisserand, office worker, virgin. ‘He has the exact appearance of a buffalo toad – thick, gross, heavy, deformed features, the very opposite of handsome.’ The description continues. And worsens. It is of one of Houellebecq’s nameable, accountable horrors. It is the kind of thing you see when you glance up from your computer screen, when you gaze out across your office, when you survey the perpetually extending domain of the struggle.

Part One

1

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

– Romans XIII, 12

Friday evening I was invited to a party at a colleague from work’s house. There were thirty-odd of us, all middle management aged between twenty-five and forty. At a certain moment some stupid bitch started removing her clothes. She took off her T-shirt, then her bra, then her skirt, and as she did she pulled the most incredible faces. She twirled around in her skimpy panties for a few seconds more and then, not knowing what else to do, began getting dressed again. She’s a girl, what’s more, who doesn’t sleep with anyone. Which only underlines the absurdity of her behaviour.

After my fourth vodka I started feeling pretty groggy and had to go and stretch out on a pile of cushions behind the couch. A bit later two girls came and sat down on this same couch. Nothing beautiful about this pair, the frumps of the department in fact. They’re going to have dinner together and they read books about the development of language in children, that kind of thing.

They got straight down to discussing the day’s big news, all about how one of the girls on the staff had come to work in a really mini miniskirt that barely covered her ass.

And what did they make of it all? They thought it was great. Their silhouettes came out as bizarrely enlarged Chinese shadows on the wall above me. Their voices appeared to come from on high, a bit like the Holy Ghost’s. I wasn’t doing at all well, that much was clear.

They went on trotting out the platitudes for a good fifteen minutes. How she had the perfect right to dress as she wished, how this had nothing to do with wanting to seduce the men, how it was just to be comfortable, to feel good about herself, etc. The last dismaying dregs of the collapse of feminism. At a certain moment I even uttered the words aloud: ‘the last dismaying dregs of the collapse of feminism.’ But they didn’t hear me.

Me too, I’d clocked this girl. It was difficult not to. Come to that even the head of department had a hard-on.

I fell asleep before the end of the discussion, but had a horrible dream. The two frumps were arm-in-arm in the corridor that bisects the department, and they were kicking out their legs and singing at the top of their voices:

If I go around bare-assed

It isn’t to seduce you!

If I show my hairy legs

It’s because I want to!

The girl in the miniskirt was in a doorway, but this time she was dressed in a long black robe, mysterious and sober. She was watching them and smiling. On her shoulders was perched a giant parrot, which represented the head of department. From time to time she stroked the feathers on its belly with a negligent but expert hand.

On waking I realized I’d thrown up on the moquette. The party was coming to an end. I concealed the vomit under a pile of cushions, then got up to try and get home. It was then that I found I’d lost my car keys.

2

Amid the Marcels

The next day but one was a Sunday. I went back to the area, but my car remained elusive. The fact was I couldn’t remember where I’d parked it. Every street looked to be the one. The Rue Marcel-Sembat, Rue Marcel-Dassault … there were a lot of Marcels about. Rectangular buildings with people living in them. A violent feeling of identity. But where was my car?

Walking up and down these Marcels I was gradually overcome by a certain weariness in relation to cars and worldly goods. Since buying it, my Peugeot 104 had given me nothing but trouble: endless and barely comprehensible repairs, slight bumps… To be sure, the other drivers feign coolness, get out their nice official papers, say ‘OK, no problem’, but deep down they’re throwing you looks full of hatred; it’s most unpleasant.

And then, if you really wanted to think about it, I was getting to work on the métro; I rarely left for the weekend any more, having nowhere I wanted to go; for my holidays I was mainly opting for the organized kind, the club resort now and then. ‘What good’s this car?’ I repeated impatiently while marching along the Rue Émile-Landrin.

It was only, however, on arriving at the Avenue Ferdinand-Buisson that the idea occurred to me of

Reviews for Whatever

[audacity88_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

After reading his other novels, Houellebecq's first effort feels weak by comparison. Without the tension of brotherhood and family (as in The Elementary Particles) or religion (as in Submission) to balance out his nihilism, the main character's pointlessness just feels... pointless.

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The unnamed narrator of 'Whatever', lives in Paris, has a well paid job working in computers and is currently single. He is lonely, utterly alone, has no friends and no family that we know of. Conversely this means that he is also completely free. Free from financial worries,attachment, guilt or emotions; free to do whatever he wants.The original French title of the book “Extension of the domain of struggle” and in this novel Houellebecq looks at the struggle for free love in a modern liberal society. A society where sexual experimentation has engendered a society of winners and losers, where self-worth is governed by the numbers of sexual partners you can amass. “Sexuality is a system of social hierarchy”.When the narrator and Tisserand, an ugly and lacking in charm colleague, are sent by their company to set up a training programme for a new computer system around some provincial towns they also embark on a tour of the local bars and clubs looking for sexual liaisons. Despite having steady jobs, a decent expenses account and good wages in this society they are still losers and abject failures. “Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization” In this novel Houellebecq argues that the lack of love in society is a direct outcome of sexual liberalism and someone like Tisserand is powerless to fight it, he will know neither love nor sexual fulfillment. Conversely the elite of the hierarchy of sexuality are little better off, "In reality, the successive sexual experiences accumulated during adolescence undermine and rapidly destroy all possibility of projection of an emotional and romantic sort." Houellebecq argues that in a society where sexual images abound in the media, pop music etc is a society that is built on easy lies and sensual pleasure is a bankrupt one.For Houellebecq questions of sex, desire are central. In this book religion, love, family and psychiatry are given short shrift. There is very little dialogue and none of the characters' backgrounds are expanded upon meaning that no easy remedies are offered up.This is a struggle we have to overcome ourselves. There are some interesting ideas within this book but for me at least not a particularly memorable one. Houellebecq points out that there is a very fine line between love and hatred, in particular self-hatred, making this a pretty bleak but thankfully also a relatively quick read.

[arewenotben · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wish I'd read this 10-15 years ago. Probably would have done if it wasn't for that god-awful cover - like the art for the 3rd single of a terrible BritPop band. Enjoyably angry.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Dit was mijn eerste Houellebecq, tevens een van zijn eerste werken. Uit wat ik eerder al over hem gelezen heb, acht ik de kans niet groot dat hij ooit een van mijn favoriete schrijvers wordt. Cynisme, nihilisme, en cultuurpessimisme zijn over het algemeen niet aan mij besteed. De lectuur van “De wereld als markt en strijd” riep in die zin vrij snel herinneringen op aan Sartre’s “La Nausée” en ook een beetje Camus’ “L’Etranger”, overgoten met de misantropische saus van Celine. Het is alsof Houellebecq die nihilistische meesterwerkjes naar onze tijd verplaatst heeft (nou ja, de jaren ’90). Met zeker 1 groot verschil: de ironische ondertoon. Bij Houellebecq krijg je er bovendien nog een hele maatschappelijke analyse bovenop, over het neoliberalisme en de vermarkting van onze samenleving. Interessant, maar erg eenzijdig, want de klemtoon blijft liggen op de zinloosheid en uitzichtloosheid van het leven. Op het eind verraste de auteur me wel (positief) met de poëtische beschrijving van een intense natuurervaring. Ik ben benieuwd naar zijn volgende werken, maar ik ben nog niet echt onder de indruk van dit kleinood.

[mlbelize · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This isn't a bad book, it just isn't for me at this time. I really don't need a book that leaves me more depressed than when I began it.

[willstoc · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The title fits the theme of the story perfectly. The narrator suffers from manic depression, and in turn has a completely apathetic and cynical world view. This was my first Houellebecq novel, so I won't be too quick to judge his storytelling capabilities. He has done a great job capturing the mindset and internal dialogue of a depressed man. The narrator depicts women in an obvious objectified male-gaze, and even reveals tendencies of racism. But such is the behavior of a man who undergoes daily bouts of incessant negativity. I did not like the narrator, and disagreed with everything he said and believed, but in order to truly simulate manic depression, Houellebecq had to delve so deep into pessimism that a glimmer of hope would surely be absurd.

[tam2603 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I am done and very glad, that it's over.
What a bad, bad book.
The protagonist is a sexist, pretentious prick, whose rambling is above all EXTREMELY BORING.
I don't see anything remotely good about this book and will not ever again read something by this author.

[gtwise · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have a collection of books I have been picking and choosing from, usually on the basis of, "what sounds good today?" and this was the most recent book I chose.The first thing that has to be said is that I did not really care. I did not care what happened to the protagonist; there was never a point where I connected with him on an intellectual level ("hey, maybe this guy has a point! I can see where he's coming from...") or an emotional level ("I hope things work out for this guy, I really want to see him find a way to resolve his struggle"). Like any criticism leveled at a book, it may say something about the quality of the book or something about the quality of the reader.I can't say that the ideas expressed in the book are totally off. Houellebecq's protagonist isn't the first to cast sex as a kind of economics, not only that but a kind of economics where (at least in a non-monogamous world) there are haves and have-nots. By the end, he has divided the world into Mars (fear, money, power, domination, masculinity) and Venus (sex, seduction) and seems vexed that there is nothing else in the world. I can sympathize, the idea that there is nothing in life except material and sexual hierarchy is very vexing, and when you find it difficult to escape the notion it can become maddening. When sex and resources cease to be cast as matters that enrich you life and instead become the only content of your life, the world seems very small indeed. This is interesting. This is an interesting concept that can be explored and wrestled with.But I still felt no intellectual connection with the protagonist. Maybe I am uncharitable, but I just don't see how two years without sex is cause for someone to lose their minds. If sex drought makes you sob intermittently throughout the day, your psyche probably was not built to last in the first place, and you don't make a very suitable model for a struggle that the modern human faces. I do say that some of his ideas have merit, but I would have to say that his reaction to his struggle smacks of someone trying to give their lives an existential flavor by portraying their petty struggles as existential crises that suck all the joy out of their lives. It worked in The Stranger, because the fact of death reasonably seems like the sort of thing that can suck the color out of life. That is a real struggle that anyone can face in their lives. Lack of sex is a reason to get a faster internet connection, not a reason to try to get your liquored-up friend to go kill people on a beach.Maybe if he had spent some time exploring what it means to live in a world that seems to be dominated by competition for resources and competition for sex - and how to move beyond such a life, I would have been interested. Maybe if he tried to live in defiance of a life. Hell, even if he decided that that was just how life is and decided to go with it, I would have been emotionally invested. But he apparently just decides to start losing control of his mind, and that is rather boring to me.So, he had some interesting ideas that are worth exploring; it just all gets lost in a very boring descent into madness.Oh well, it wasn't too long, no great loss. Whatever....

[sigmundfraud · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Not among Houellebecq's best.

[jcbrunner · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Appropriately for the topic of this short novel, I bought it in Geneva among the limited selection of an airport kiosk to kill some time. I hadn't read any Houellebecq prior, though I have seen and not particularly liked the German film interpretation of his The Elementary Particles. The English title of L'Extension du domaine de la lutte, Whatever, misses the original's aggressiveness of the narrator who is both depressed and filled with aggressive misogynistic and xenophobic resentment. A major reason why it took me so long to finish those few pages. The narrator is just a unsavory character whose company one not really seeks. He is decidedly not the enchanting monster type à la Humbert Humbert, Dexter or Grenouille (from The Parfume) but a sad little creep.The book's contemporary Generation X authors such as Douglas Coupland and Nick Hornby treat similar themes in a much lighter and humane way. I am not sure if I want to read another Houellebecq.

[wendyrey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Why is it so many of the '1001 books' are stream of consciousness, guilt ridden angst? This is well written ( and translated) and 'about' a depressive, introspective, social isolate, male geek, who finds it hard and/or impossible to relate to other people. He agonises a lot, drinks a lot, thinks about sex, gets depressed, gets treated and gets a bit better.Elegantly written.

[lorespar · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

From my public library: So its not really mine, but I just gravitate towards this writer's sense of impropriety, so French, yet so naked of culture at the same time.

[michaeldwebb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is Houellebecq's first novel, short, concise, and covers all his usual themes: sex, philosophy and general disgust at being human. Houellebecq is probably a great writer (or at least an important one), but he isn't a great storyteller - 'Possibilities of An Island' proved that. His limited story telling ability doesn't really matter here though - it's short, basically a series of episodes marking the narrators mental deterioration.If you only want to read one of his novels I'd probably go for Atomised or Platform instead.

[k0vy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I like the Guardian's comment on the back cover: "This book slips down easily like a bad oyster.". And, indeed, I was amused reading the first half. How can this guy be so negative. But at the end, I was dragged down to that mood, and needed some time to recover. Dangerous read. :)