After Senator Claude Malhuret, whose speech on Trumpism was relayed to the United States, it was to Michel Houellebecq that the writer and journalist Philippe Labro devotes the second delivery of his new newsletter on the media online Kessel. He relates a telephone conversation there with the author of Elementary particles, who currently lives in Lisieux, Normandy. We reproduce it with the agreement of Philippe Labro.
Philippe Labro: Do you write?
Michel Houellebecq: Yes, but only poems. I am not writing a novel right now. I know why. I no longer smoke. I was avoided, in a rather serious way, that it was necessary to stop smoking. Now smoking helps me to think.
Do you read?
For the first time in my life, Jane Austen, and I immersed myself in novels by Alphonse Daudet. He wrote The little thing. What formula …
Movie theater ?
I was part of the Caesar jury and what was friendly was to receive the box and see all the DVDs. Except that now, everything is going through the internet and I can’t get to the Internet.
Do you follow the news?
I no longer inquire. Too many ads on news channels. Pubs tunnels. I can’t finish them.
Trump, all the same?
I don’t understand why people are shocked and surprised. They have always been like that, the Americans. Always strength. Their isolationism does not upset me.
What can upset you?
If we send people to be killed.
With your Submission, And the decline of time, can we say that you were right?
Not really, because the situation I mentioned is not acquired. The process of submission, in the news, is much slower than that imagined in my novel.
Are you listening to music?
Nothing that strikes me. I may be too old. I am still 67 years old! I blocked at the music of the sixties. I have to be a little limited.
The news?
One of my regrets is not to have tried to do like Emmanuel Carrère: from a real news item to build a novel.
Which one would you choose?
Dupont de Ligonnès, it could inspire me. When I was a teenager, I love thrillers and science fiction, but their level has dropped. The thriller was a method of exploring society, he gave way to psychoanalytic thrillers. We have not replaced Jean-Patrick Manchette or Thierry Jonquet.
So what are you spending your time?
I told you, poetry. I will undoubtedly make public representations as in the past. I like that. Poetry is done to be read aloud.
[Les réponses de Houellebecq sont plutôt lentes, précédées d’une sorte de silence, comme si, à chaque interrogatoire, il souhaitait donner toute son importance. Il faut attendre. Mais il revient avec cet étrange mélange, non pas de mélancolie, mais de distanciation avec l’immédiateté et la vitesse de l’époque. Et de dérision voilà.]
Are you happy?
[Le silence est encore plus long avant la réponse]
I don’t know. It would be very pretentious to say that I am not too unhappy with myself, but let’s say that I did a part of what I wanted to do.
[N’est-ce pas notre quête à tous, lui dis-je ? Nous ne faisons jamais qu’une partie des choses.]
The only writer who may have fulfilled all his ambitions in full is Victor Hugo.
[Austen, Daudet, Hugo, Manchette, Carrère. Il surprend toujours, la rockstar de la littérature française. Il me dit au revoir dans un bruit de travaux.
C’est dans ma maison. Ils font des choses chez moi, mais je ne sais pas de quoi il s’agit.
[De quoi s’agit-il avec Houellebecq ? Une intelligence paradoxale. Le charme du choix des mots, l’omniprésence de l’humour. L’inattendu. Courant mai, il recevra le “Prix Jérusalem pour la liberté des individus dans la société” à Jérusalem. C’est un prix littéraire de très haut niveau. On y trouve des récipiendaires comme Ionesco, Kundera, Semprun, Murakami. Le lauréat prononce habituellement un discours. C’est, au fond, une sorte de Nobel avant l’heure. Vous verrez qu’il l’aura un jour.]