Word: michell
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Houellebecq's credit, his artistic failures are not due to a lack of effort. In fact, to a large extent they can be attributed to an excess of ambition, to a preoccupation with analyzing "the big picture." Ostensibly, The Elementary Particles tells the story of half-brothers Bruno and Michel as they struggle to cope with a world torn apart and debased by the sexual revolution of the late 1950s and early 1960s. However, from the historical tone of the prologue to the modest conclusion of the novel ("This book is dedicated to humanity"), Houellebecq constantly reminds his reader that...
Bruno and Michel are members of that awkward generation too young to be considered baby-boomers and too old to fit in with the Generation-Xers. They are, rather, the product of the hippie free love that was just beginning to flourish on both sides of Atlantic forty-odd years ago. Born to a loveless woman who leaves both sons with their respective grandparents in order to join a commune in California, Bruno and Michel become, essentially, the direct descendants of their age. Both dracins endure lonely and occasionally brutal childhoods that leave them unlovable and incapable of loving...
...everything from Kant to Huxley in lieu of giving them actual thoughts. It is not rare that one encounters such grand generalities as, "He was surprised at how miserable he felt. Far removed from Christian notions of grace and redemption, unfamiliar with the concepts of freedom and compassion, Michel's worldview had grown pitiless and mechanical." Such a statement flounders in the context of a work of fiction, and unfortunately is not redeemed by any breathtaking originality...
...capable of appalling masochistic sexual rituals. As for his individual characters, there is of course no action for them to take other than to wander off into oblivion. Bruno checks into a mental institution where he spends the rest of his pathetic days numbing his libido with cocktail medications. Michel, after discovering a way to clone perfectly rational non-egotistical human beings that will in a few years time subsume flawed humanity, simply disappears. Such episodes could, under different circumstances, be viewed as truly funny and truly scandalous satire. But posed as the outcomes of or even the solutions...
...Michel Houellebecq...