languid nostalgia of patriarchy

Billed as a provocative and sulfur book about Islam and the future of France, "Submission" is proving to be a calm and detached romance, composed by Houellebecq with his usual sociological insight.

The story tells the story of a man, Francis, brilliant academic specialist Carl-Joris Huysmans. Reaching forty, with no illusions about its future, François sneaks quietly in the maze of his time (the action takes place in 2024) to enjoy the best possible benefits from its status: enjoy a work but not too painful remunerative, meet young students to make a her his companion renewed each year, drinking, more than enough to forget the rest. The first look that Houellebecq poses on the central character of his novel allows him to draw a scathing portrait of the decrepitude of Western society in general and French in particular. The reign of individualism and emptiness of a civilization now led by the pleasure and consumption condemns, for the author, a method increasingly governed by the absurd: "The university in the field of letters act like we know almost nothing except for the most talented students at a university teaching career in letters - was in fact the situation rather comical for a system having no other purpose that its own reproduction, involves a waste rate greater than 95% "(page 17). It also regret the way the period constituted according to him the height of that civilization: "The French Revolution, the Republic, the homeland ... yes it could lead to something; something that lasted a little over a century. Medieval Christianity, it lasted over a thousand years "(page 162). Perfect knowledge of Francis for Huysmans and his questions about it (in Rocamadour getaway, retirement weekend in Poitiers) also allow Houellebecq to conduct a comparative analysis of what were the reflexes and responses of the men of the nineteenth century compared to the twenty-first.

The issue of Islam and its political ramp is approached initially indirectly through the issue of patriarchy. Francis, when discussing, Myriam, his young companion of the moment with it directly evokes the subject: "You are for the return of patriarchy, right?
- I'm for anything, you know, but patriarchy had the minimum merit of existing, well I mean as a social system he persevered in his being, there were families with children, Wholesale reproduce the same pattern, short turned it; where there is no longer enough children, so it is folded "(page 41). In this context, while pointing the suicidal strategy of governing parties and more of our President - "The word of insurrection had naturally caused many comments, and even had this unexpected result out to Francois Hollande of his prolonged silence . After his two five-year calamitous, having had his re-election at the shabby strategy to foster the rise of the National Front, the outgoing president had almost given up expressing themselves, and most of the media seemed to even have forgotten his existence "(page 115) - the author then develops the main driver of political fiction frame which is the caeur the second part of his novel. He thus depicts the arrival in power of Mohamed Ben Abbes and his party of the Muslim Brotherhood, built on the sum of all possible compromises of politicians to block the road to the National Front.

Islam is then considered not as an invading religion, although that ultimately she becomes absolutely, but as a means to bridge the sidereal chasm loss of values ​​in which is itself hasty Western civilization. François Its hero, cut off from traditional attaches following the successive deaths of his mother and his father - a metaphor probably means French, now deprived of its ancestors and its historical roots - agrees to fully enter into the new system, for reasons of comfort and ease (many wives a situation and money ...). Houellebecq described in this regard, with great subtlety, the chains of cause and effect which lead to the inevitable accomplishment of this conclusion. He likes there, somehow, to identify with Cassandra, so misunderstood in our time: "As I had explained one of my colleagues who taught Greek literature this use of myth Cassandra was curious background ( ...) In short, Cassandra offered the example of pessimistic predictions made constantly, and he seemed to see the facts, that journalists center-left that do not recover the blindness of the Trojans. Such blindness was nothing historically unique: we could find the same among intellectuals politicians and journalists in the 1930s, unanimously convinced that Hitler "would eventually come to their senses." It is probably impossible, for people who have lived and prospered in a given social system, imagine the view of those who, never having had nothing to expect from this system, considering its destruction no particular fear "(page 55).

Pleasant, clever, funny as always with a few well-turned forms - "Alice asked us this look at once affectionate and slightly mocking women following a conversation between men, that curious thing that always seems to hesitate between pederasty and duel" (page 58) - "Submission" is a brilliant and subtle novel, the air of nothing, takes a look of great acuity on the springs of our society, following a very coherent literary approach adopted there it already has 20 years with "Extending the area of ​​the fight."