Discussion of Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles: March 4-11, 2008. With the participation of Sabine van Wesemael, University of Amsterdam.

The first thing that struck me while reading Michel Houellebecq’s Elementary Particles was the way in which the story unfolds. The story is told by a seemingly cold and detached narrator, who describes most of the scenes in a matter of fact manner without much emotion. For example, the scene in which the death of Bruno’s first lover, Annick is described is particularly memorable. “Jumped from the seventh floor, said a nearby woman, with odd satisfaction, ‘killed stone dead.’ At that moment an ambulance arrived and two men got out carrying a stretcher. As they lifted her body he saw her shattered skull and turned away. The ambulance drove off in a howl of sirens. So ended Bruno’s first love” (128).

Another element in the book that I found particularly interesting was the drastic difference between the two main characters, Michel and Bruno. The half-brothers were both abandoned by their mother and left to different grandmothers. This has a lasting effect on each of the characters. However, while we see Bruno lonely and desperately seeking the attention and approval of every woman he meets, Michel is much more reclusive and calm. Michel is so self-involved and consumed by his work; he is even unaware that Annabelle is in love with him. While Michel is seemingly accepting of his loneliness, his situation is perhaps even more tragic than that of his brother Bruno’s desperation. Michel and Bruno are dealing with many of the same issues, but they deal with them in two very different ways. I would be interested to see what others thought of the stark difference between the two, as it seems significant but I don’t quite know what to make of it.

The most basic theme that I noticed as I read through The Elementary Particles was love, or the absence thereof. After reading the epilogue, which initially threw any ideas I had about the book away, I came up with a list of sections or brief passages in the book which seem to exemplify the characters’ chase for love and acceptance, and the eventual shift to cloning:

1. Pg. 49 “Without beauty a girl is unhappy because she has missed her chance to be loved.” This goes along with the idea that Michel eventually has to be rid of separate genders so that there will be no such discrimination. Later on he adds to this idea when Michel wonders, “What on earth were men for” (pg. 137) The narrator actually is leading the reader to the idea of an asexual, utopian society as the book progresses, but it not apparent until retrospect because the concept is part of the characters’ dialogue. Mixed up with all of the sexual and biologic material, I found it hard to distinguish.

2. Michel’s journey towards his eventual hypothesis is especially clear once Annabelle dies. One of his most poignant speeches, I think, is from pg. 251: “In this space of which they are so afraid, human beings learn how to live and to die; in their mental space, separation, distance and suffering are born. There is little to add to this: the lover hears his beloved’s voice over mountains and oceans; over mountains and ocean a mother hears the cry of her child. Love binds, and it binds us forever. Good binds, while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit. All that exists is a magnificent interweaving, vast and reciprocal.” Clearly, separation, especially between the genders, is what he believes, as well as the narrator, to be the cause of the world’s problems.

3. On a different note, pg. 57 “But the past always seems, perhaps wrongly, to be predestined.” seems to exemplify how the normal human way of viewing life and reproduction is ironic. Normally, you would say that the future is predestined, but in the novel Michel is reinventing the future of genetics. In this case, it is the past which is already permanent.

In part 3 of the novel, Michel learns of a study via e-mail that proposes that sexual reproduction is reason behind evolution. It is stated that "As soon as the genome had been completely decoded (which would be in a matter of months), humanity would be in a position to control its own evolution, and when that happened sexuality would be seen for what it really was: a useless, dangerous and regressive function" (p.220). It seems that during the majority of the novel Houellebecq is demonstrating the vulgarity of sexuality. Bruno seems to use sex as a means for self-abuse and gratification. Michel's work delves into the uselessness of sex and reproduction, looking at cloning as a means to generate life.

Both Bruno and Michel seem to represent different aspects of today's society and how sexuality is viewed. Sexuality is both idolized and shunned. We see billboards, commercials, and magazine covers that are loaded with sex and suggestibility. At the same time, scientific advancements are creating life outside of the womb. Biologically we are supposed to want to reproduce, therefore being triggered by overtly sexual ads and media stimuli; scientifically we are searching for alternatives to sex for means of reproduction. How do we adjust to these mixed signals, and where is the middle ground? Is the middle ground love, as could be suggested? Do we use sex as an expression of love in order to cope with the possibility that our reason for living (to spawn more life) is becoming archaic? And is that gratifying enough to pacify us? Gratification does not seem possible in the novel. Bruno has found love in Christiane, but must seek out "swingers" and the like in order to be satisfied in his relationship. Perhaps there is no middle ground and we must all find unsatisfactory means to fill the potential void.

Like Jim, I found Houellebecq's positing of Bruno and Michel in stark contrast as a major point of interest in the work. The parallelisms of the two character's lives (raised by their grandmothers, their distinct and extreme sexualities (Bruno's hedonism, and Michel's asexuality/sterility of sexual feelings, devoid of feeling), the two female characters and their deaths...), and their distinct and irreconcilable realities (their professions, their childhoods, Bruno's parenthood, Michel's fame in the scientific community) make me wonder if Houellebecq is suggesting a sort of doubling, that the two characters are incomplete in their own right and it is only in their affect on each other that they are mutually constructed.

In a passage in which Bruno is referring to his son (Victor), he says "They would come to be rivals - which was the natural relationship between men" (139). This concept of father-son rivalry directly invokes Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex, which is hinted at throughout the text (Bruno spies on his naked mother, when he sees his father at the massage parlour), however, Houellebecq chooses to include "all men", that is, not exclusively within the father-son relationship do men experience rivalry, but within any male relationship. In what ways is the relationship of Bruno-Michel one of pure rivalry and how can their relationship be seen as free of rivalry (how is their relationship lacking even the most basic forms of sibling rivalry)? Can it be agreed that all rivalry ultimately springs from our obsession with individuality? If so, what can we make of Michel's efforts to erradicate society of individuality through science? Between Michel and Bruno, which character can be conceived of as the most individualistic? At one point Michel questions as to whether it is even "possible to think of Bruno as an individual?...His hedonistic world view and the forces that shaped his consciousness and desires were common to an entire generation" (148). Michel, apropos Huxley's Brave New World states, "Individualism gives rise to freedom, the sense of self, the need to distinguish oneself and to be a superior to others" (133), ultimately individualism and the obsession with individualism cultivates rivalry, as does "narcissistic differentiation".

Throughout the novel I found myself thinking of Bruno and Michel as twins rather than step-brothers, which was a concept that I found reinforced by a passage of the epilogue:

"To the notion that human personality was in danger of disappearing, he proposed the concrete example of identitical human twins who, through their individual experiences and despire their shared genetic code, developed different personalities while maintaining a mysterious fraternity - which, as Hubczejak pointed out, was exactly the element necessary if humanity were to be reconciled" (261).

So, how can we conceive of human personality vs. individuality? Is Michel's scientifically engineered world the ultimate existential existence in which there is only existence with which to differentiate ourselves? Can we definitively agree upon this future as dystopic?

"Human beings have who have worked-worked hard-all their lives with no motive other than love and devotion, who have literally given their lives for others, out of love and devotion; human beings who have no sense of having made any sacrifice, who cannot imagine any way of life other than giving their lives for others, out of love and devotion. In general, such human beings are generally women." (77)

This quote from the novel struck me. I find it quite interesting that Houellebecq would write this in a novel where the two main characters, Michel and Bruno, were abandoned by their mother, who is generally supposed to be this type of selfless woman. I wonder if Houellebecq wrote this in order to suggest some connection between the way Michel and Bruno grew up without a mother and the unhappy adults they became? Perhaps they are the way they are because they did not have a mother who devoted her life to them? Maybe this is why they could never find true happiness?

In addition to this, I found that the novel often praises women and acknowledges the importance of their presence. I wonder if this is why the goal for the future is to be feminine? I also thought it might be interesting to somehow tie this praise of women in The Elementary Particles to what Tyler Durden says about women in Fight Club. Tyler Durden says, "This is the result of a generation raised by women." Tyler Durden says this with a negative connotation as if men turned out badly because of women whereas Houellebecq writes as if men will turn out to be better because of women. Maybe Tyler Durden knows something about women that Houellebecq does not.

I found the novel’s constant reference to free will interesting. Throughout the novel Michel seems to believe that humans lack free will and are the result of their environment. On page 148 the narrator, seeming to express Michel’s thoughts, says:

“Was it possible to think of Bruno as an individual? They decay of his organs was particular to him, and he would suffer his decline and death as an individual. On the other hand, his hedonistic world view and the forces that shaped his consciousness and desires were common to an entire generation. Just as determining the apparatus for an experiment and choosing one or more observables made it possible to assign a specific behavior to an atomic system- no particle, now wave- so could Bruno be seen as an individual or, from another point of view, as passively caught up in the sweep of history.”

The book continuously questions the existence of human free will. When Annabelle’s mother dies Michel understands that “one could not battle against the empire of sickness and death” (234). This sentiment is echoed when Christiane commits suicide, the narrator suggests that “weighing up of pleasure and pain, which everyone is forced to make sooner or later, leads logically, at a certain age, to suicide” (204). The narrator implies Christiane’s suicide, which can be viewed as the ultimate act of free will, was inevitable. The book also creates a history of individualism which portrays the individual as a source of violence and destruction. The fall of Christianity is linked to sexual permissiveness which results ultimately in violence. Bruno tells the story of a writer David Macmillan who writes “having exhausted the possibilities of sexual pleasure, it was reasonable that individuals, liberated from the constraints of ordinary morality, should turn their attention to the wider pleasures of cruelty” (171-175). Does the novel advocate the abandonment of individualism? The novel seems to suggest that people can exist without free will as a collective unit.

Questions
1. The novel ends with a world seemingly devoid of division and individualization, but one that is successful. Is Houellebecq suggesting this would be a better world?

2. Does the question of free will play a large role in the book, or are the passages I have cited isolated incidences?

3. Is the fact that Michel and Bruno represent different facets of human society but both die isolated from human contact important?