Whatever: Amazon.de: Michel Houellebecq, Paul Hammond: Englische Bücher

Taschenbuch: 160 Seiten
Verlag: Serpents Tail (14. Januar 1999)
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN-10: 1852425849
ISBN-13: 978-1852425845
Gr��e und/oder Gewicht: 19,7 x 13,1 x 1,1 cm

Durchschnittliche Kundenbewertung: 4.8 von 5 Sternen Alle Rezensionen anzeigen (6 Kundenrezensionen)

Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 230.760 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)

M�chten Sie die Produktinformationen aktualisieren oder Feedback zu den Produktabbildungen geben?

Ist der Verkauf dieses Produkts f�r Sie nicht akzeptabel?

Entdecken Sie B�cher, lesen Sie �ber Autoren und mehr

› Besuchen Sie die Seite von Michel Houellebecq auf Amazon

Amazon.co.uk

Michel Houellebecq's book Whatever was a smash hit in his native France and has already gained him a cult following here. A funny, sometimes bitter, modern existentialist fable Whatever truly seems to capture the zeitgeist. Whilst his next novel Atomised showcases greater sophistication and is certainly more complex and reaching, Whatever remains a brisker, more distilled affair.

Houellebecq's clarity of style is often remarked upon and the translation does a mostly decent job of conveying, in short chapters, in a fairly staccato book, his distaste for modern life. The narrator of the novel is young (just 30), well paid (computers!) and without a love life--not a geek, nor particularly a social inadequate, rather someone who just doesn't connect. He writes strange, allegorical animal stories; is a clumsy philosophical dilettante; and finds himself bored, overly self-aware and analytical, unable to settle and settle for his life. Then he is told to go on a extended work trip training provincial civil servants in the use of a new computer system accompanied by the extremely ugly Raphael Tisserand. Throughout the novel, the cheapening of sex and intimate relationships through commodification and modern communication technology is contemplated, but the interrogation remains relatively uncommitted; the attacks on psychoanalysis come thick and fast, seem more personal and often find their target.

Houellebecq does do a good job here of exemplifying the cul-de-sac that bored intelligence often finds itself languishing in. The trouble with this as a stratagem for a novel is that the reader is in danger of caring as little for the book as the characters do for their lives; this tightrope is better walked by writers such as Beckett or even Brett Easton Ellis and navigated more successfully by Houellebecq himself in his next novel. Indeed in many ways Whatever seems like a dress rehearsal for Atomised with similar characters imbued with the same concerns, the same post nouvelle-philosophes ennui running throughout. But it is a dress rehearsal worth attending: there is more than enough clever writing here, with its mordant articulation of a very particular kind of modern unhappiness, to consider it a success. --Mark Thwaite

From Booklist

Houellebecq's deeply philosophical novel is about an alienated young man searching for happiness in the computer age. Bored with the world and too weary to try to adapt to the foibles of friends and coworkers, he retreats into himself, descending into depression while attempting to analyze the passions of the people around him. Houellebecq uses his nameless narrator as a vehicle for extended exploration into the meanings and manifestations of love and desire in human interactions. Ironically, as the narrator attempts to define love in increasingly abstract terms, he becomes less and less capable of experiencing that which he is so desperate to understand. Intelligent and well written, the short novel is a thought-provoking inspection of a generation's confusion about all things sexual. Houellebecq captures precisely the cynical disillusionment of disaffected youth. Bonnie Johnston

Alle Produktbeschreibungen

Einleitungssatz
Friday evening I was invited to a party at a colleague from work's house. Lesen Sie die erste Seite

Mehr entdecken
Wortanzeiger

Ausgew�hlte Seiten ansehen
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Auszug | R�ckseite

Wenn Sie ein Verleger oder Autor sind und die digitalen Rechte an einem Buch haben, k�nnen Sie die digitale Version des Buchs in unserem Kindle-Shop verkaufen. Weitere Informationen

Kunden diskutieren

Das Forum zu diesem Produkt

Diskussion	Antworten	J�ngster Beitrag
Noch keine Diskussionen

Fragen stellen, Meinungen austauschen, Einblicke gewinnen

Neue Diskussion starten

Thema:

Erster Beitrag:

Bei neuen Eintr�gen E-Mail erhalten

Eingabe des Log-ins

Richtlinien

Aktive Diskussionen in �hnlichen Foren

Diskussion	Antworten	J�ngster Beitrag
Forum: englische b�cher Gay (BDSM) titles	5	Vor 6 Stunden
Forum: englische b�cher Looking for really good books - very well written or exceptional plot or inspiring or all in one...	208	Vor 10 Stunden
Forum: englische b�cher Suche engl. B�cher mit denen ich die Sprache besser erlerne	16	Vor 12 Stunden
Forum: englische b�cher englischsprachiges Buch f�r erste Klasse Gymnasium	1	Vor 14 Stunden
Forum: englische b�cher Welches englische Buch lest Ihr zur Zeit?	239	Gestern
Forum: englische b�cher Utopia/Dystopia	13	Gestern
Forum: englische b�cher Euer erstes englischsprachiges Buch?	288	Vor 2 Tagen
Forum: englische b�cher Action-Adventure Books in English	105	Vor 2 Tagen

Kundendiskussionen durchsuchen

�hnliche Foren

Forum: englische b�cher (530 Diskussionen)

Legen Sie Ihre eigene Lieblingsliste an

Kundenrezensionen

5 Sterne

4 Sterne

3 Sterne

2 Sterne

1 Sterne

6 Rezensionen

4.8 von 5 Sternen

Kundenrezension verfassen

Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen

1 von 1 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

A few words by a French reader 2. November 1999

Von S. Maruta

Format:Taschenbuch

THe original tittle for this book is 'extension du domaine de la lutte' (extension of the struggle field) and in French it sounds exactly like one of those manifestos 70s terrorists like to publish in between bombings and assassinations. Maybe this is a simple warning from the author: I AM DANGEROUS!

Well Michel Houelebecq doesn't look too dangerous and his ideas are either a posture of pessimistic contempt or the work of a dangerous lunatic, probably both. Still EDDDLL is before all a great novel. If you're into the subversive discourse of the author on the loathsome nature of sexual freedom and the need to overcome it you should read its 2nd novel (and last years'tremendous best seller in France): les particules elementaires.

PS: a film adaptation of EDDDLL has just been releised in France.

Kommentar |

War diese Rezension f�r Sie hilfreich?

Nein

A really, really good book 28. Oktober 1999

Von Ein Kunde

I really enjoyed reading this book, despite its depressing subject matter. I could really relate to the character, and if lots of people feel this way, well then I don't feel so bad! At times it was laugh out loud funny, at other times it was like reading f---ing 'prozac nation'..but by the end of it it had that open-ended French intellectual feel that most contemporary novels just can't seem to get. A winner.

Cynical but/and (mutually exclusive? i think not) sensitive 16. Mai 1999

the beginning didn't get my hopes up (nor did the horrific neon cover of the book, actually), but my attitude proceeded to metamorphosize throughout the course of the novel and completely changed by the end (which in itself was a bit curious, but i won't get into that-- all great books have weird endings, no?)-- i quite liked it. the tone is great-- i laughed (more like chuckled or snickered), my face lapsed into seriousness, i muttered some words to myself... pardon the impending psychobabble, but i felt an affinity for the narrator despite his frequent comments about being unable to identify with other people; he's "separate"/aloof and yet painfully sensitive-- which latter quality of course makes him vulnerable and approachable. the book is wry, dry, intelligently and adroitly offhand, piercing, sarcastic, and even ugly at times, yet it simultaneously possesses a fascinating sense/message of persistent hope (and a comment upon man's peculiarly tenacious nature when it comes to hope). overall, i would say it reminded me of a cross between sartre's _nausea_ and salinger's _catcher in the rye_. well-orchestrated (except for the very beginning...), a great job-- i'd love to read more of houellebecq's work.