The Possibility of a Book About Houellebecq

It looks as though Zero have a book on Houellebecq in the pipeline - makes perfect sense, after all it he was he who identified very clearly the way in which 'business ontology' had come* to dominate even interpersonal relationships in 'L''Extension Du Domaine De La Lutte' - lazily translated into English as 'Whatever' when it really translates as 'the extension/broadening of the field of struggle'. It'll be interesting to see whether it just tackles his work or his public persona as well (those comments on Islam etc). I suspect (and hope) it will largely be the former - but will that include the film of La Possibilité D'une Île (which I've only managed to see a few clips of on YouTube), his dabbling in 'erotic' film and that album on Tricatel where his poems are backed by Bertrand Burgalat and his house band (mostly lounge-y, Air-y vibes that work well with Houllebecq's images of consumer-business classes 'enjoying' their leisure/travel time)?



* and that tense right there is very important in Houllebecq, 'Atomised' begins with it. In both that and 'The Possibility of an Island', the Last Men in their near-obsolescence (like Island's 'shock' comedian Daniel) are observed from a future standpoint - "I am in a telephone box, after the end of the world. I can make as many telephone calls as I like, there is no limit. I have no idea if anyone else has survived, or if my calls are just the monologues of a lunatic. Sometimes the call is brief, as if someone has hung up on me; sometimes it goes on for a while, as if someone is listening with guilty curiosity. There is neither day nor night; the situation is without end." Houllebecq is someone who actually does envisage the end of Capitalism, either through the genetically engineered arrival of the post-human in Atomised, or through immortality equalling the elimination of desire/'self' in The Possibility of Island.* In the latter, it's hardly an image of human collectivity (only very loose kind of future-internet-based one)... but then there is that 'possibility', which in Houllebecq's work isn't much, but it isn't nothing either.

*What is the island? A place where the miserable desiring machines of the past, and the desire-less clones that persist for the rest of forever, could be reconciled.




NB On closer inspection I just imagined that thing about the tense - it's just the simple past he uses after all... maybe the pluperfect/past perfect just feels like the right tense for Houllebecq.