Gorilla With a Mobile Phone
Here’s a link to an article which, I’ll readily confess, I’m citing only because I like its opening lines: “Novelists today tend to be pretty bloodless creatures. Look at their bios: They’re mostly workshop professors or M.F.A. hatchlings. They review their peers’ books, sit on grant panels, give readings and interviews, and, during their free time, cook up soft-boiled bores to pay their children’s tuition.”
If you want to read more about Michel Houellebecq, I’d recommend Theo Tait’s fine essay in the London Review of Books. Tait writes: “Houellebecq has established himself as one of the great international brands of popular literary fiction. But there is a great deal of disagreement over whether he’s a genius, a fraud or a reprobate.” Tait argues that, in fact, Houellebecq is all three.
