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The controversial French author of The Elementary Particles (2000) turns in another unremittingly bleak novel. In addition to amplifying his views on the decadence of Western civilization, Houellebecq displays an absolutely chilling prescience in his depiction of a violent Muslim sect. Misanthropic, sexually frustrated bureaucrat Michel embarks on a "Thai Tropic" package tour, amusing himself with snide commentary on his fellow vacationers and frequent visits to sex clubs. Although he is attracted to business executive Valerie, he has trouble engaging her in small talk. However, when they return to Paris, their relationship quickly turns passionate as they explore sadomasochism and public sex. Michel talks Valerie and her business partner into marketing sex tours to the Third World, selling them on his theory that Westerners have lost touch with their own sexuality. But when they decide to sample one of their own tours, their resort becomes a flashpoint for Islamic hatred. Houellebecq is unrelenting as he meticulously constructs a world that mirrors his own cold vision and that cuts uncomfortably close to the bone. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Pressestimmen
“Howard Stern meets Albert Camus in this novel of sex and alienation . . . Houellebecq has sharp observations about ennui in the Western world and rage in the Muslim one.”
–Kyle Smith, People
“Astute, graceful, sexually preoccupied . . . Houellebecq rewards with glimpses through his particularly keen lens.”
–Arthur Hirsch, The Baltimore Sun
“A novel at once brilliant, charming, puzzling, annoying and sometimes downright repulsive . . . The work of a highly talented writer.”
–Jean Charbonneau, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“The talented, cynical Houellebecq blasts Western culture and Islam in his odd, subversive entertainment.”
–Carlo Wolff, The Boston Globe
“Blunt, arrogant, coolly detached, ultra-sophisticated, impeccably and simply presented, intellectually self-assured and very self-conscious . . . This is the real thing, the kind of novel that ends up in the canon.”
–Michel Basilières, The Toronto Star
–Kyle Smith, People
“Astute, graceful, sexually preoccupied . . . Houellebecq rewards with glimpses through his particularly keen lens.”
–Arthur Hirsch, The Baltimore Sun
“A novel at once brilliant, charming, puzzling, annoying and sometimes downright repulsive . . . The work of a highly talented writer.”
–Jean Charbonneau, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“The talented, cynical Houellebecq blasts Western culture and Islam in his odd, subversive entertainment.”
–Carlo Wolff, The Boston Globe
“Blunt, arrogant, coolly detached, ultra-sophisticated, impeccably and simply presented, intellectually self-assured and very self-conscious . . . This is the real thing, the kind of novel that ends up in the canon.”
–Michel Basilières, The Toronto Star
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0 von 2 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch
This is a love story between a woman who every man dreams to meet, and a man who no woman could ever love. No woman but Valerie, who doesn't know what you get for being good and generous. But luckily nowadays there aren't many women left of her kind, maybe only in the imagination of some writer. And even the Flying Dutchmen of the new millennium are just petty nihilist accountants lost in a stormy seas of peep shows and massage parlors. Not even true love, unexpected and undeserved, can save them. Michel is right: you don't get a second chance, it's against the rules of a life that the book unmasks in its real cold appearance. And if it's true that these themes have already been dealt with in the past, perhaps even better than here, Houellebecq does it today, with today's language. And writing about today is always the most difficult thing, especially if you want to face serious and deep issues in a different point from that of a TV talk show. To do it in such a fluent, and at times even funny way (just read the description of the various art projects looking for financing) is a rare and praiseworthy feat, in an age in which marketing imposes its questionable strategies even upon works of art. Houellebecq knows that if you want people to read a book, first you must be able to sell it. In this sense, the pornographic overdose of "Platform", at times more gratuitous than really necessary, is more a means through which to diffuse this book than the end for which it has been written. But it's also the reason why it gets 4 stars instead of 5.
0 von 3 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch
This is a love story between a woman who every man dreams to meet, and a man who no woman could ever love. No woman but Valerie, who doesn't know what you get for being good and generous. But luckily nowadays there aren't many women left of her kind, maybe only in the imagination of some writer. And even the Flying Dutchmen of the new millennium are just petty nihilist accountants lost in a stormy seas of peep shows and massage parlors. Not even true love, unexpected and undeserved, can save them. Michel is right: you don't get a second chance, it's against the rules of a life that the book unmasks in its real cold appearance. And if it's true that these themes have already been dealt with in the past, perhaps even better than here, Houellebecq does it today, with today's language. And writing about today is always the most difficult thing, especially if you want to face serious and deep issues in a different point from that of a TV talk show. To do it in such a fluent, and at times even funny way (just read the description of the various art projects looking for financing) is a rare and praiseworthy feat, in an age in which marketing imposes its questionable strategies even upon works of art. Houellebecq knows that if you want people to read a book, first you must be able to sell it. In this sense, the pornographic overdose of "Platform", at times more gratuitous than really necessary, is more a means through which to diffuse this book than the end for which it has been written. But it's also the reason why it gets 4 stars instead of 5.
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16 von 19 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Welcome to the Wild and Erotic World of Michel and Valérie!
26. Juli 2003
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
A small conceit of the English translation of Michel Houellebecq's PLATFORM is that certain words and phrases the author originally used in English are boldfaced, presumably so that readers will know that they carried a sort of extra Anglo-Saxon punch in the original text. However, the boldfaced words also recall the talent of Frank Wynne, Houellebecq's translator. I mention these words because I otherwise might not have remembered that I was reading a translated text, so clearly and accurately has Wynne rendered the author's unmistakable, inimitable voice.
With that said, this is not a voice all readers will appreciate. Protagonist and first-person narrator Michel Renault lives a small, sour existence as a middle-aged, middle-management civil servant. His Paris contains no romance and less contentment, and so he travels --- but his coldly assessing eye hardly allows him to enjoy his journeys or his arrivals. Sex in a variety of forms preoccupies him, and it is through sexual experiences that he seems to at least feel alive. While the women on his tour mainly disgust him (the young and nubile he deems "sluts"; the older and more aware he derides in various ways), women whom he can pay for sex receive the small bits of appreciation he can muster.
Still, it is a fellow tour group member, Valérie, with whom Michel connects when back in Paris. Michel, whose barely restrained anger towards his recently dead father once prevented him from pairing off with anyone besides his own hand, finds Valérie's combination of submissive generosity and high-paying job as a tourism executive irresistible. Their relationship brings him so much contentment that his boss comments that he seems happy. Despite their calm domestic bliss, the pair (both of whom seem quite addicted to orgasm) soon finds themselves drawn to more and more extreme erotic adventures.
Most of the time, PLATFORM seems more like one for Houellebecq's extreme yet articulate views than it does a novel --- yet his frozen-eyed comments on capitalism, religion, and gender politics are uncomfortably close to the secret thoughts so many people have. When Michel and Valérie devise a plan to turn her company's tours into sex holidays, they return together to the Thailand where he once experienced the zipless pleasures of a remarkably sanitary sex worker...For a moment, it seems that everyone will be happy, even Valérie's dour boss, Jean-Yves (given his straitlaced viewpoint, Houellebecq seems to say that it's no wonder his wife moonlights as a dominatrix). But alas, an early discussion Michel has with his father's housekeeper-mistress, whose Muslim honor avenged resulted in Renault pére's murder, presages the tragic end of the resort community and Michel's brief personal paradise. That this paradise is based on Western woman's supposed boredom with the all-too-familiar sex-for-love equation and the purported eagerness of Eastern woman to trade sex for the simple things (groceries, reliability, good manners) makes Houellebecq's Utopia terribly disturbing --- and terribly thought-provoking.
--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick
8 von 9 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Houellebecq is one of the best writers living today
27. September 2004
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Platform is probably the best of Houellebecq's novels (the somewhat daft ending of 'Atomised' spoiled it for me). Houellebecq is one of the best writers living today. Next to his novels, most others just seem weak in comparison, beating around the bush, never really getting to grips with what we might call real life. Houllebecq tells it as it is; he does not mess about. He writes frankly about the things that really matter, the issues that really concern us, with acute and often brutal incisiveness. A common criticism of Houellebecq is that he digresses too much from the plot and frequently goes off on tangents, weaving philosophies and observations on life in general into the narrative. I would say that this is one of his greatest strengths. The beauty of novels is that this kind of digression is possible, whereas in a movie script, for example, it is not. It enriches the novel - it gives it depth. Anyone who has seen the film 'Whatever' as well as reading the book will know that as good as the film is, it could never have contained all the hilarious observations and incisive social commentary that the book does.
7 von 8 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Provoking....
26. November 2004
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Those of you who are interested in European discourse will remember the crusade on author of this book two years ago, which culminated in whole dossier published in Finkelkraut's European Messenger in which leading pens of Euro culture raised their voices trying to intelectually subdue this book and statements presented in it.
Inraged cries of every religious community out there, from islam to christianity ensured the succes to this book.
We are witnesses of methods of mass media so one should always look with scepticism too all kind of fusses that are raised towards todays literature. But this book really deserved it. And that, believe it or not is a good thing to literature.
Ever since the begining of time, writer was supposed to shock community, from Boccacio's Decameron to Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Sluggishnes of thought and slowness of mind that dominated Europe are finaly broken with this book.
Every concept out there is driven trough, you may almost call it Occham's razor, deconstructig society in general, not willing to admit any kind of supremacy to culture or historicism author tries to present the new world which even in today's democracy (whatever that means) stands out as twisted and pervert....At least to majority of people.
Read this book... It is a begginig of a new epoch....
Inraged cries of every religious community out there, from islam to christianity ensured the succes to this book.
We are witnesses of methods of mass media so one should always look with scepticism too all kind of fusses that are raised towards todays literature. But this book really deserved it. And that, believe it or not is a good thing to literature.
Ever since the begining of time, writer was supposed to shock community, from Boccacio's Decameron to Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Sluggishnes of thought and slowness of mind that dominated Europe are finaly broken with this book.
Every concept out there is driven trough, you may almost call it Occham's razor, deconstructig society in general, not willing to admit any kind of supremacy to culture or historicism author tries to present the new world which even in today's democracy (whatever that means) stands out as twisted and pervert....At least to majority of people.
Read this book... It is a begginig of a new epoch....
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