Famed French author Michel Houellebecq does not need an introduction. That is why, instead of reviewing the book in the normal way, I decided to simply present some passages I found particularly striking. Not necessarily nice or pleasant—Houellebecq is not the kind of writer who makes you feel good about yourself, let alone the society in which you spend your life. But striking. Especially when I read them for the second time. Readers are welcome to agree, disagree, or add any others of their own; after all, though I expect to be censored every day, so far my blog remains free.

The words in italics after some paragraphs are mine.

p. 104.

“Further along there was a table of Hong Kong Chinese – recognizable by their filthy manners, which are difficult for Westerners to stomach, and which threw the Thai waiters into a state of panic, barely eased by the fact that they were used to it. Unlike the Thais, who behave in all circumstances with a finicky, even pernickety propriety, the Chinese eat rapaciously, laughing loudly, their mouths open, spraying bits of food everywhere, spitting on the ground and blowing their noses between their fingers – they behave quite literally like pigs. To make matters worse, that’s an awful lot of pigs.

Based on personal observation, I agree.

p. 112-13.

“At the time when the white man thought himself superior, racism wasn’t dangerous. For colonials, missionaries and lay teachers in the nineteenth century, the Negro was a big animal, none too clever, a sort of slightly more evolved monkey. At worst, they considered him a useful beast of burden, capable of performing complex tasks; at best a frustrated soul, coarse, but, through education, capable of elevating himself to God – or at least western reason. In both cases, they saw in him a ‘lesser brother’, and one does not feel ‘At the time when the white man thought himself superior, racism wasn’t dangerous. For colonials, missionaries and lay teachers in the nineteenth century, the Negro was a big animal, none too clever, a sort of slightly more evolved monkey. At worst, they considered him a useful beast of burden, capable of performing complex tasks; at best a frustrated soul, coarse, but, through education, capable of elevating himself to God – or at least western reason. In both cases, they saw in him a ‘lesser brother’, and one does not feel hatred for an inferior – at most a sort of cordial contempt. This benevolent, almost humanist racism has completely vanished. The moment the white man began to consider blacks as equals, it was obvious that sooner or later they would come to consider them to be superior. The notion of equality has no basis in human society… Once white men believed themselves to be inferior,.. the stage was set for a different type of racism, based on masochism: historically, it is in circumstances like these that violence, inter-racial wars and massacres break out. For example, all anti-Semites agree that the Jews have a certain superiority: if you read anti-Semitic literature, you’re stuck by the fact that the Jew is considered to be more intelligent, more cunning, that he is credited with having singular financial talents – and, moreover, greater communal solidarity. Result: six million dead.”

Western society seems to be determined to making men qua men feel inferior. That, my dear feminists, is when things become really dangerous for you.

p. 113-14.

“Racism… ‘seems to be characterized firstly by an accumulation of hostility, a more aggressive sense of competition between males of different races; but the corollary is an increased desire for the females of the other race. What is really at stake in racial struggles…is neither economic nor cultural, it is brutal and biological: it is competition for the cunts of young women.”

p. 115.

“[In Europe] it’s not the whites that make the law any more … I predict an increase in racial violence in Europe in years to come; it will all end in civil war… It will all be settled with Kalashnikovs.”

p. 188-89.
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“As we get closer to suffering and cruelty, to domination and servility, we hit on the essential, the intimate nature of sexuality… “Cruelty is a primordial part of the human, it is found in the most primitive peoples: in the earliest tribal wars, the victors were careful to spare the lives of some of their prisoners to let them die later, suffering hideous tortures. This tendency persisted, it is constant throughout history, it remains true today: as soon as a foreign or civil war begins to erase ordinary moral constraints, you find human beings – regardless so. Cruelty is a primordial part of the human, it is found in the most primitive peoples: in the earliest tribal wars, the victors were careful to spare the lives of some of their prisoners to let them die later, suffering hideous tortures. This tendency persisted, it is constant throughout history, it remains true today: as soon as a foreign or civil war begins to erase ordinary moral constraints, you find human beings – regardless of race, people, culture – eager to launch themselves into the joys of barbarism and massacre. This is attested, unchanging, indisputable, but it has nothing whatever to do with the quest for sexual pleasure – equally primordial, equally strong.

p. 211.

A source of permanent, accessible pleasure, our genitals exist. The god who created our misfortune, who made us short-lived, vain and cruel, has also provided this form of meagre compensation. If we couldn’t have sex from time to time, what would life be? A futile struggle against joints that stiffen, caries that form. All of which, moreover, is as uninteresting as humanly possible – the collagen which makes muscles stiffen, the appearance of microbic cavities in the gums.

p. 240-42.

“Something must be happening to make Westerners stop sleeping with each other; maybe it’s something to do with narcissism, or individualism, the cult of success, it doesn’t matter. The fact is that from about the age of twenty-five or thirty, people find it very difficult to meet new sexual partners; although they still feel the need to do so, it’s a need which fades very slowly. So they end up spending thirty years of their lives, almost the entirety of their adult lives, suffering permanent withdrawal.

Halfway along the path to inebriation, just before mindlessness ensues, one sometimes experiences moments of heightened lucidity. The decline of western sexuality was undoubtedly a major sociological phenomenon which it would be futile to attempt to explain by such and such a specific psychological factor… You have several hundred million Westerners who have everything they could want but no longer manage to obtain sexual satisfaction: they spend their lives looking, but they don’t find it and they are completely miserable. On the other hand, you have several billion people who have nothing, who are starving, who die young, who live in conditions unfit for human habitation and who have nothing left to sell except their bodies and their unspoiled sexuality. It’s simple, really simple to understand: it’s an ideal trading opportunity.

p. 244-54.

“Giving pleasure unselfishly: that’s what Westerners don’t know how to do any more. They’ve completely lost the sense of giving. Try as they might, they no longer feel sex as something natural. Not only are they ashamed of their own bodies, which aren’t up to porn standards, but for the same reasons they no longer feel truly attracted to the body of the other. It’s impossible to make love without a certain abandon, without accepting, at least temporarily, the state of being in a state of dependency, of weakness. Sentimental adulation and sexual obsession have the same roots, both proceed from some degree of selflessness; it’s not a domain in which you can find fulfilment without losing yourself. We have become cold, rational, acutely conscious of our individual existence and our rights; more than anything, we want to avoid alienation and dependence; on top of that we’re obsessed with health and hygiene: these are hardly ideal conditions in which to make love. The way things stand, the commercialization of sexuality in the East has become inevitable.”

p. 361.

“More than any other people, [the Germans] are acquainted with worry and shame, they feel the need for tender flesh, for soft, endlessly refreshing skin. More than any other people, they are acquainted with the desire for their own annihilation. It is rare to come across the vulgar, smug pragmatism of Anglo-Saxon sex tourists among them, that manner of endlessly comparing goods and prices. It is equally rare for them to exercise, to look after their bodies. In general, they eat too much, drink too much beer, get fat; most of them will die pretty soon. They are often friendly, they like to joke, to buy a round, to tell stories; but their company is soothing and sad.

I have lived in Germany and am fluent in the language. I’d say that hardly any German over 13 is free from the burden: the more they deny it, the guiltier they feel.

I understand death now… I don’t think it will do me much harm.”

But life can.