6
" I know it's crazy but I've decided to stay in Rouen this weekend. Tisserand was astonished to hear it; I explained to him I wanted to see the town and that I had nothing better to do in Paris. I don't really want to see the town.
And yet there are very fine medieval remains, some ancient houses of great charm. Five or six centuries ago Rouen must have been one of the most beautiful towns in France; but now it's ruined. Everything is dirty, grimy, run down, spoiled by the abiding presence of cars, noise, pollution. I don't know who the mayor is, but it only takes ten minutes of walking the streets of the old town to realize that he is totally incompetent, or corrupt.
To make matters worse there are dozens of yobs who roar down the streets on their motorbikes or scooters, and without silencers. They come in from the Rouen suburbs, which are nearing total industrial collapse. Their objective is to make a deafening racket, as disagreeable as possible, a racket which should be unbearable for the local residents. They are completely successful. "
― Michel Houellebecq , Whatever
7
" Immediately after the Christmas holidays I stopped speaking to her. The guy who had spotted me near the station seemed to have forgotten the incident, but I had been afraid even so. In any case, dating Bardot would have demanded a moral strength far superior to the one I could, even at the time, pride myself on. Because not only was she ugly but she was plain nasty. Goaded on by sexual liberation (it was right at the beginning of the 80s, AIDS still did not exist), she couldn't make appeal to some ethical notion of virginity, obviously. On top of that she was too intelligent and too lucid to account for her state as being a product of "JudeoChristian influence" - in any case her parents were agnostics. All means of evasion were thus closed to her. She could only assist, in silent hatred, at the liberation of others; witness the boys pressing themselves like crabs against others' bodies; sense the relationships being formed, the experiments being undertaken, the orgasms surging forth; live to the full a silent selfdestruction when faced with the flaunted pleasure of others. Thus was her adolescence to unfold, and thus it unfolded: jealousy and frustration fermented slowly to become a swelling of paroxystic hatred. "
― Michel Houellebecq , Whatever
9
" The problem is, it's just not enough to live according to the rules. Sure, you manage to live according to the rules. Sometimes it's tight, extremely tight, but on the whole you manage it. Your tax papers are up to date. Your bills paid on time. You never go out without your identity card (and the special little wallet for your Visa!).
Yet you haven’t any friends.
The rules are complex, multiform. There’s the shopping that needs doing out of working hours, the automatic dispensers where money has to be got (and where you so often have to wait). Above all there are the different payments you must make to the organizations that run different aspects of your life. You can fall ill into the bargain, which involves costs, and more formalities.
Nevertheless, some free time remains. What’s to be done? How do you use your
time? In dedicating yourself to helping people? But basically other people don’t interest you. Listening to records? That used to be a solution, but as the years go by you have to say that music moves you less and less.
Taken in its widest sense, a spot of do-it-yourself can be a way out. But the fact is that nothing can halt the ever-increasing recurrence of those moments when your total isolation, the sensation of an all-consuming emptiness, the foreboding that your existence is nearing a painful and definitive end all combine to plunge you into a state of real suffering.
And yet you haven’t always wanted to die.
You have had a life. There have been moments when you were having a life. Of
course you don't remember too much about it; but there are photographs to prove it. This was probably happening round about the time of your adolescence, or just after. How great your appetite for life was, then! Existence seemed so rich in new possibilities. You might become a pop singer, go off to Venezuela.
More surprising still, you have had a childhood. Observe, now, a child of seven, playing with his little soldiers on the living room carpet. I want you to observe him closely. Since the divorce he no longer has a father. Only rarely does he see his mother, who occupies an important post in a cosmetics firm. And yet he plays with his little soldiers and the interest he takes in these representations of the world and of war seems very keen. He already lacks a bit of affection, that's for sure, but what an air he has of being interested in the world!
You too, you took an interest in the world. That was long ago. I want you to cast your mind back to then. The domain of the rules was no longer enough for you; you were unable to live any longer in the domain of the rules; so you had to enter into the domain of the struggle. I ask you to go back to that precise moment. It was long ago, no? Cast your mind back: the water was cold. "
― Michel Houellebecq , Whatever
16
" Let's put a
chimpanzee in a tiny cage fronted by concrete bars. The animal would go berserk,
throw itself against the walls, rip out its hair, inflict cruel bites on itself, and in 73%
of cases will actually end up killing itself. Let's now make a breach in one of the
walls, which we will place next to a bottomless precipice. Our friendly sample
quadrumane will approach the edge, he'll look down, but remain at the edge for
ages, return there time and again, but generally he won't teeter over the brink; and
in all events his nervous state will be radically assuaged. "
― Michel Houellebecq , Whatever
19
" My idea is not to try and charm you with subtle psychological observations. I have no desire to draw applause from you with my finesse and my humour. There are some authors who employ their talent in the delicate description of varying states of soul, character traits, etc. I shall not be counted among these. All that accumulation of realistic detail, with clearly differentiated characters hogging the limelight, has always seemed pure bullshit to me, I’m sorry to say. Daniel who is Hervé’s friend, but who feels a certain reticence about Gérard. Paul’s fantasy as embodied in Virginie, my cousin’s trip to Venice … One could spend hours on this. Might as well watch lobsters marching up the side of an aquarium (it suffices, for that, to go to a fish restaurant). Added to which, I associate very little with other human beings. To reach the otherwise philosophical "
― Michel Houellebecq , Whatever
