Book review: Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq

His second novel after Whatever, Houellebecq gets ambitious with Elementary Particles and scores another winner.

A great companion to the Ken Wilber’s philosophical treatise Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (The Spirit of Evolution) because it comes from the same pre-millennium era and follows a similar Historical trajectory (though with vastly different conclusions) Elementary Particles demonstrates a mastery of philosophical concepts, a diverse knowledge of Scientific principles and the deft touch of a master craftsman. That being said, you’re in for a wild ride of emotional extremes.

Two brothers, Bruno and Michel, suffer from the existential pathology of modernity, manifested in different ways. Bruno, being thoroughly a part of the world, is the sensualist, but his attempts to woo are ineffective and he frequents nudist colonies as some sort of last resort. Michel, a famous Molecular Biologist, feels nothing and strives to find value in the machinery of Life. Both will fail, of course. They approach love and ultimately lose to the vagaries of necessity, but they are playing out their roles and find some wisdom along the way.

Michel muses about his brother along philosophical lines:

“Was it possible to think of Bruno as an individual? The 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 worldview 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 – now 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. His motives, values and desires did not distinguish him from his contemporaries in any way.”

And then, in characteristic Houellebecq fashion, an immediate example of counterpoint that drives home the point:

“Generally, the initial reaction of a thwarted animal is to try harder to attain its goal. A starving chicken (Gallus domesticus) prevented from reaching its food will make increasingly frantic…”

It’s witty and cold and hilarious and ultimately nauseating in a characteristically French idiom. Bruno manages to get himself ill. Michel furthers mandkind’s ills with Science. Civilizations moves on. A good read.