The Elementary Particles: Amazon.de: Michel Houellebecq: Englische Bücher

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Produktinformation

Gebundene Ausgabe: 272 Seiten
Verlag: Knopf (7. November 2000)
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN-10: 0375407707
ISBN-13: 978-0375407703
Gr��e und/oder Gewicht: 24,1 x 16,3 x 3 cm
Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 1.033.499 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)

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Bruno and Michel are half-brothers, born to a hippie mother who believed in following her bliss. As boys they live in ignorance of each other--at one point attending the same school without knowing of their blood connection. As grown men they're not truly close, but they occasionally phone each other late at night. Bruno's a hopeless sexual obsessive, often drunk or on his way there, and Michel's a molecular biologist, distant and inaccessible.

Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles follows these brothers through the latter half of the 20th century. Bruno and Michel are buffeted by history, vessels of disappointment and desire rocked by the ocean of time. Shuttled away to a boarding school where he's sexually abused by other boys, Bruno grows up full of twisted sexual longings and a contempt for aging women so palpable that at times it's stomach-churning. At a commune in the country, Bruno takes stock:

The women were intolerable at breakfast, but by cocktail hour the mystical tarts were hopelessly vying with younger women once again. Death is the great leveler. On Wednesday afternoon he met Catherine, a fifty-year-old who had been a feminist of the old school. She was tanned, with dark curly hair; she must have been very attractive when she was twenty. Her breasts were still in good shape, he thought when he saw her by the pool, but she had a fat ass.

Michel doesn't hate women; he doesn't even notice them. Instead of leering at bodies by the pool, he stares at particles in microscopes. He wins prizes for his experiments, but never experiences the rush of life. For both men, the damage has been done by history, by mother, before the story begins. What interests Houellebecq are the permutations and recapitulations of damage--the way the particles of the self can never be completely reconstituted. --Emily White

From Booklist

French author Houellebecq's second novel--which scandalized France and ignited a fervent debate over the virtues and vices of liberalism--lives up to its reputation. It's a phenomenal book. Houellebecq has launched a broadside against what he believes to be the decadent culture of the 1960s, which he believes spawned the selfish, narcissistic individualism of contemporary Western civilization. The title refers to the book's relentless existential theme: that society is a fraud, and permissive contemporary culture has enslaved human beings in a world of loneliness and misery. The book recounts the lives of Bruno and Michel Djerzinski, half-brothers born to a Bohemian mother and different fathers. Bruno is a failed academic and sexual obsessive; Michel is an asexual, lonely molecular biologist who envisions the salvation of humanity in a future race of hermaphroditic human clones free of the baser human desires. This pessimistic treatise has been compared favorably--and accurately--to the dystopian worlds of Camus and Huxley. The author is unflinching in the construction of his world, which is full of graphic sexuality. Above all, a remarkable, fascinating contemporary novel. Ted Leventhal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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124 von 133 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

Pathetic, pornographic, and profound...magnifique! 14. Dezember 2000

Von Guillaume - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

When I read the shrill reviews from the uptight liberals at the New York Times, I knew this book had to be good. I was right. The Elementary Particles is the story of two half-brothers in post-1960s France. When their hippy mother runs off to a New Age community in California, the two boys are sent to live with different sets of grandparents. The boys grow up in a world infected by the ideas of the 1960s revolution. The highest values are American ones: radical individualism, sexual liberation, and self-expression. The bonds holding people together have been eroded as France is mercilessly (and tragically) Americanized. Every facet of life has been reduced to crude, radical competition. The law of the jungle prevails. The two brothers react to this sad new world in interesting ways. Bruno -- a teacher, failed writer, and chronic masturbator -- embarks on a life of endless searching for love but becomes obsessed with pornography, sex clubs, cyber sex, and nudist holiday camps; he molests one of his female students. Michel, a scientist, withdraws from the world, unable to love; he devotes all his time to biology and genetics research. Their superficially different reactions bely the fact that they suffer from the same modern disease which manifests itself in an inability to love, self-absorption, and an absence of meaningful social interactions. There is no larger community in this world; just a bunch of atomized human beings -- elementary particles -- that occasionally bump into one another for sex. They are adrift in a decadent West unaware of its own rapid decline. Bruno and Michel ultimately choose similar ways to deal with their sad fate. This book is a timely indictment of the social, sexual, economic, and technological upheavals in the West since the 1960s. This may help explain why Houellebecq has been so viciously denounced by the liberal and conservative establishment, not only in France but also in America. Speaking truth to power makes enemies. As a much-needed critique of a global society dominated by liberal, consumerist American values this is a very important work. But as a deconstruction of that society it is only the beginning. It is also entertaining and hilarious, if at times needlessly graphic. I recommend it.

84 von 89 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

Woah. not for everyone. FOR ME. 29. Januar 2004

Von Campbell Roark - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

Format:Taschenbuch

First, a quote from Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy," the spirit of which I'd swear animates this novel...

"...An old legend has it that King Midas hunted a long time in the woods for the wise Silenus, companion of Dionysos, without being able to catch him. When he had finally caught him the king asked him what he considered man's greatest good. The daemon remained sullen and uncommunicative until finally, forced by the king, he broke into a shrill laugh and spoke: "Ephemeral wretch, begotten by accident and toil, why do you force me to tell you what it would be your greatest boon not to hear? What would be best for you is quite beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best is to die soon."

Ok- here's the deal. Either you go in for the bleak, unredemptive, unflinching view of humanity and existence, or you don't. I loved this book. It cut me to the bone and I was glad for it. Houellebecq takes apart our desires, our dreams, our age, all our petty cultural trappings- and exposes them for the broken props that they are. Even The sci-fi bookends of the novel didn't grate too badly, though it ended abruptly.

Houellebecq presents a worldview that only a scabrous, self-hating continental intellectual could craft so well. And thank Doug for that! This is a nihilistic work of highest caliber, a descendant of Celine (though H's misanthropy and nihilism aren't the same strain of gleeful, musical hate as Celine's), Hamsun and Huysmans. So be warned, all is not roses and puppy dogs. Humanity, nature, the world in which we live are reviled in a variety of insights, characters and plotlines, none of which end happily. Incidentally, Celine is even channelled, you might say, in the novel, when Bruno, sickened and humiliated by his own powerlessness attempts to publish some racist tracts in a journal, a la everyone's favorite fascist of the 30's.

Both of the main characters (Bruno and Michel) are offered chances at making a good life for themselves, despite their failings as humans... Both are given a chance at happiness, or, perhaps a bovine contentment... I'll let you find for yourself what happens.

Now, Even if you disagree with any of the perceptions and theories presented in this vitriolic little book, it is still a good thing for you to be exposed to them, as it can only result in you holding your own views with a larger frame of mind. I found this book to be a much needed dose of cold, bathos-sterilizing refreshment. Ah!

30 von 30 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

bleak french genius 22. November 2000

Von Ein Kunde - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

I agree with the reviewer who said that reading this book was sort of like taking a particularly bitter pill. I sacrificed any chances of a good mood for the week I spent reading this book. I was haunted by the images of physical decay, moral corruption, and sexual perversity that Houellebecq so starkly portrays. The more I read, the clearer it became to me that most writers publishing in America don't dare to tackle big ideas. However flawed The Elementary Particles might be, the fact that Houellebecq confronts not only scientific progress and philosophical schools of thought, but also death, sickness, gender and sex in the most universal sense, shows such courage and vision that I can't help thinking this novel is genius. The glimmer of hope offered by the cryptic last pages ("the future is feminine") actually does lift away some of the bleakness, without taking away from the overall seriousness. Houellebecq also has a grim sense of humor that I enjoyed. I'm not surprised this hasn't received more attention in the U.S. I wish that weren't true. Maybe then American writers (or more precisely, American publishers) might find the courage to compete with this guy. The bar has been raised.

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