Interventions 2020

The death of God in the West was the prelude to a formidable metaphysical soap opera that continues to this day. Christianity's masterstroke was to combine a fierce belief in the individual with the promise of eternal participation in the Absolute. When that dream evaporated, various attempts were made to offer the individual a minimum of being. The latest of these attempts is advertising, which seeks to arouse desire and transform the subject into a docile phantom doomed to follow advertising's every whim. But, like all previous attempts, this skin-deep, superficial participation in the world fails, and unhappiness and depression continue to spread.

However, we can all produce a cold revolution in ourselves by stepping outside the flow of information and advertising. We need to take some time out, unplug the television, turn off our iPhones, stop buying stuff, stop wanting to buy stuff, temporarily detach ourselves and adopt an aesthetic attitude to the world. We just need to stay still for a few seconds.

This is one of the key themes developed by Michel Houellebecq in this collection of his texts and interviews from the last three decades. Here he explains and elaborates his point of view, discusses his novels and addresses a wide range of topics from politics, religion and literature to suicide, euthanasia and paedophilia. An indispensable book for anyone interested in the work of one of the most widely read and controversial novelists of our time.

Auteur

Michel Houellebecq is a French writer, poet and essayist. His many bestselling books include Platform, The Possibility of an Island, Submission and Serotonin. He won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2010 and, in 2019, he was awarded the Légion d'honneur, France's highest order of merit.

Contenu

1. Jacques Prévert is a jerk

   2. The Mirage by Jean-Claude Guiguet

   3. Approaches to distress

   4. Staring into the distance: in praise of silent cinema

   5. Interview with Jean-Yves Jouannais and Christophe Duchâtel

   6. Art as peeling

   7. Creative absurdity

   8. The party

   9. Time out

   10. Opera bianca

   11. Letter to Lakis Proguidis

   12. The question of paedophilia

   13. Humanity, the second stage

   14. Empty heavens

   15. I have a dream

   16. Neil Young

   17. Interview with Christian Authier

   18. I don't love myself

   19. Sky, earth, sun

   20. Leaving the twentieth century

   21. Philippe Muray in 2002

   22. Towards a semi-rehabilitation of the hick

   23. Conservatism, a source of progress

   24. Prolegomena to positivism

   25. I'm normal. A normal writer

   26. I have read my whole life long

   27. Soil cutting

   28. The lost text

   29. Interview with Frédéric Beigbeder

   30. A remedy for the exhaustion of being

   31. Interview with Marin De Viry and Valérie Toranian

   32. Interview with Agathe Novak-Lechevalier

   33. Emmanuel Carrère and the problem of goodness

   34. Donald Trump is a good president

   35. Conversation with Geoffroy Lejeune

   36. A bit worse. A response to a few friends

   37. The Vincent Lambert affair should not have taken place