Houllebecq sucks, or why horny white men should not travel

Being the frank francophile that I am I try to keep up with the major cultural movements in France. Living far away and being primarily self absorbed in my own life, only the biggest waves make a ripple in my attention and therefore I miss out on most cultural phenomena coming out of the hexagon. Michel Houllebecq, France's literary badboy did make it on to my radar a few years ago (the guy actually won the Prix Goncourt this year) so I decided to read a book, see a movie, and see what was what.

I read Platforme (2001), and saw Les elements particulaires.

The film was shit. The book even worse (more on that later).

Then today, I read an interesting article on tattoo culture by Mark Greif (wait, the connection is coming), got curious about him (some literary guy out of NYC) and looked up some other things that he had written. I read a review he wrote in 2003 of Houllebecq's Platforme and it re-awakened all of my dormant ire and irritation. My feminist growl and literary snobbism were ready for a fight.

I had pretty much forgotten the plot line of Platforme and could only remember my feeling of revulsion and disgust when I finished it. Luckily for me, Greif does a quick summary of the book, to remind me what I hated about it. It goes something like this: whiny French guy, isolated from any meaningful relationship goes to Thailand to fuck Thai girls, does some of that, meets a wonderful French woman, who is perfect in every way (basically, is completely forgiving of his narcissist, self absorbed, bullshit and still puts out all the time to mutual orgasmic joy), moves back to France, and said girlfriend sets up a sex-tourism industry which helps gross, middle aged white folks go to the third world so that they can screw third world whores. Then a bomb goes off, the girlfriend dies and the French guy goes back to being a whiny asshole (which, consequently, he never stopped being). The end.

The feelings I have about this book resemble the vitriol I felt upon reading Un dimanche a la piscine a Kigali (Gil Courtemanche, 2000) quite a few years ago. I was so incensed upon finishing it that if it had belonged to me I would have ripped it in half. It is almost against my nature to do violence upon books but it was such crap that I could barely control myself. The plot there, if I remember correctly, was: white male protagonist in Kigali during the genocide, wanting to fuck some young, idealized stereotype of the "African woman" (is it possible that her name was Innocente? or wait, Gentille!), fucks her, she gets killed (we get a long description of her rape and her deciding to embrace it and enjoy it) and then some other people get killed. The end.

After reading it, I read a glowing review by Giles Foden, of whom I had previously thought good things. I haven't read another book of his since.

Can we not move past the image of woman, and the 'exotic' woman, more specifically, as a piece of ass? My feminist heart grows weary at the way the over-sexualization of women is so taken for granted, is so unblinkingly presumed that it doesn't even make the review pages.

I am tired just thinking of how to articulate my argument, how to couch it in words that don't raise the hackles of anti-feminist middle roaders. What is so plain to me, so obvious to the women around me, doesn't cause a ripple or a pause, not a parentheses, nor a hand scratching across an unshaven chin. It is an uphill battle. One that makes me, when the anger has run out, terribly sad.