Editing Michel Houellebecq (section)

== Reception ==
Literary critics have labelled Houellebecq's novels "vulgar", "pamphlet literature" and "pornography"; he has been accused of obscenity, racism, [[misogyny]] and Islamophobia.<ref name="hunnewell" /><ref name="profile">{{Cite web |title=Michel Houellebecq Profile at the European Graduate School. Biography, bibliography, photos and video lecture. |url=http://www.egs.edu/faculty/michel-houellebecq/biography/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110224050530/http://www.egs.edu/faculty/michel-houellebecq/biography/ |archive-date=24 February 2011 |access-date=30 January 2011 |publisher=[[European Graduate School]] |location=[[Saas-Fee]], Switzerland}}</ref> His works, particularly ''Atomised'', have received high praise from the French literary intelligentsia, with generally positive international critical response, though there have been poor reviews in ''[[The New York Times]]'' by [[Michiko Kakutani]] and Anthony Quinn, in the ''[[London Review of Books]]'' by [[Perry Anderson]],<ref>Perry Anderson, [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n17/perry-anderson/degringolade Dégringolade] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110710223643/http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n17/perry-anderson/degringolade |date=10 July 2011 }}, ''London Review of Books'', September 2004.</ref> as well as mixed reviews from ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]''.<ref name="crev">{{Cite web |title=The Elementary Particles (Atomised) by Michel Houellebecq. |url=http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/houelbqm/partelem.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101125051401/http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/houelbqm/partelem.htm |archive-date=25 November 2010 |access-date=31 January 2011 |publisher=The Complete Review.}}</ref> However, without ignoring the book's grotesqueries, [[Lorin Stein]] from ''[[Salon (website)|Salon]]'', later editor of ''[[The Paris Review]]'', made a spirited defense:

{{blockquote|Houellebecq may despair of love in a free market, but he takes love more seriously, as an artistic problem and a fact about the world, than most polite novelists would dare to do; when he brings his sweeping indignation to bear on one memory, one moment when things seemed about to turn out all right for his characters, and didn't, his compassion can blow you away.<ref>Stein, Lorin (23 October 2000). "What to Read in October". ''[[Salon.com|Salon]]'', Published online (23 October 2000) as [http://www.salon.com/2000/10/23/octoberfiction/ "What to Read in October"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103150857/http://www.salon.com/2000/10/23/octoberfiction/ |date=3 November 2012 }}. Retrieved 8 November 2011.</ref>}}

Ten years later, Houellebecq responded to critical reviews:

{{blockquote|First of all, they hate me more than I hate them. What I do reproach them for isn't bad reviews. It is that they talk about things having nothing to do with my books—my mother or my tax exile—and that they caricature me so that I've become a symbol of so many unpleasant things—cynicism, nihilism, misogyny. People have stopped reading my books because they've already got their idea about me. To some degree of course, that's true for everyone. After two or three novels, a writer can't expect to be read. The critics have made up their minds.<ref name="hunnewell">[[Susannah Hunnewell]] (2010) 'Michel Houellebecq, [http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-fiction-no-206-michel-houellebecq The Art of Fiction No. 206] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100919165522/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-fiction-no-206-michel-houellebecq |date=19 September 2010 }}' Fall 2010 ''[[The Paris Review]]''.</ref>}}

According to the Austrian feature-writer Anne-Catherine Simon, Houellebecq's oeuvre shows "great continuity: as a long story of western [[decadence]]".<ref>{{cite journal |author=Anne-Catherine Simon |url=https://www.diepresse.com/4899829/houellebecqs-welt-von-der-dekadenz-zur-unterwerfung |title=Houellebecqs Welt: Von der Dekadenz zur "Unterwerfung" |journal=[[Die Presse]] |date=2016-01-07 |access-date=2023-02-17}}</ref>

In an interview with Agathe Novak-Lechevalier Houellebecq characterised himself as "the author of a nihilistic era and the suffering that goes along with [[nihilism]]".<ref>In: Michel Houellebecq: ''Ein bisschen schlechter.'' [[M. DuMont Schauberg|Dumont Buchverlag]] Cologne 2020.</ref>

Lovecraft scholar [[S. T. Joshi]] has criticised Houellebecq's stance on Lovecraft.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Joshi |first=S. T. |date=August 2018 |title=Why Michel Houellebecq Is Wrong about Lovecraft's Racism |journal=Lovecraft Annual |issue=12 |pages=43–50 |issn=1935-6102 |jstor=26868554}}</ref> An essay by Todd Spaulding makes the case for why Houellebecq portrayed Lovecraft as an "obsolete reactionary" whose work was based largely on "racial hatred."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Spaulding |first=Todd |date=August 2015 |title=Lovecraft and Houellebecq: Two Against the World |journal=Lovecraft Annual |issue=9 |pages=181–211 |issn=1935-6102 |jstor=26868505}}</ref>{{Explain|reason=|date=October 2019}}

However, [[Christopher Caldwell (journalist)|Christopher Caldwell]] defends Houellebecq for his overall depictions of technological loneliness and cultural alienation:

{{blockquote|Certain basic things that important novelists do, Houellebecq does not. Great novels usually concern the relationships, institutions, and ideals out of which the "bourgeois" social order is knit together—marriages, schools, jobs, piety, patriotism. But in our time, relationships fail to take root. Institutions fall apart. The visible social order seems not to be the real one. Many novelists limit their vision to those narrow precincts where the world still makes sense (or can be made to make sense) in the way it did to Balzac or Flaubert ... Houellebecq is up to something different. He places his characters in front of specific, vivid, contemporary challenges, often humiliating and often mediated by technology: Internet pornography, genetic research, terrorism, prescription drug addiction. This technological mediation can make his characters seem isolated, and yet it is an isolation with which any contemporary can at least empathize. The Outsider is Everyman. Houellebecq's reputation as a visionary rests on his depiction of what we have instead of the old bourgeois social order.<ref name="Caldwell">[[Christopher Caldwell (journalist)|Christopher Caldwell]] (March 2020), "A Bellow from France",[https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/christopher-caldwell/houellebecq-on-the-modern-age/] March 2010 ''[[Commentary (magazine)|Commentary]]''.</ref>}}

Houellebecq's novels are often classified as [[satire]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Preston |first=Alex |date=2015-09-08 |title=Submission by Michel Houellebecq review – satire that’s more subtle than it seems |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/08/submission-michel-houellebecq-review-satire-islamic-france |access-date=2024-12-18 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2015-12-03 |title=Michel Houellebecq and the limitations of satire, by Paul Constant |url=https://seattlereviewofbooks.com/reviews/michel-houellebecq-and-the-limitations-of-satire/ |access-date=2024-12-18 |website=www.seattlereviewofbooks.com}}</ref>