Michel Houellebecq at home, Paris, 2014
Michel Houellebecq at home, Paris, 2014 © Barbara d’Alessandri/Starface

Half an hour late, the sound of panting comes from the stairs. More time passes. Getting up to the first floor of Paris’s snooty Monsieur Bleu restaurant in the Palais de Tokyo museum of contemporary art seems to be a challenge. Finally Michel Houellebecq, France’s best-selling novelist — and, as he will explain, the best living novelist on earth — makes it into the room. Now that he no longer receives security protection against Islamist terrorists, he is alone. Nearing the table, he exudes a whiff of alcohol.

In most of his publicity portraits, Houellebecq looks revolting. But in the flesh he is rather elegant, even handsome. (With most writers and their publicity photos, it’s precisely the other way around.) He apologises for being late, orders a mid-afternoon bottle of white wine, and lights a cigarette as if France had not banned smoking in restaurants in 2008. Luckily, we are alone in the room. He holds his cigarette delicately between forefinger and middle finger, like a genteel lady from a bygone age.

Most novelists aren’t very visual people. That’s why they developed an ear for words. But Houellebecq is a gifted photographer. An exhibition consisting mostly of his photographs, called Rester vivant (“To Stay Alive”, also the title of his debut collection in 1991), opens in the Palais de Tokyo on Thursday. His pictures chart the same great theme as his novels: the collapse of western civilisation. And nobody incarnates that collapsing civilisation better than Houellebecq himself.

He was born in the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean in 1956 (or, perhaps, 1958, he thinks). Abandoned soon afterwards by his hippie mother, he was raised mostly in French exurbs, and has ended up incapable of believing in anything. Read against this background, his philosophical novels are peculiarly autobiographical. His standard main character is a godless Frenchman bereft of family and other traditional structures, living in an ugly modern world in which everything — especially sex — has been reduced to a consumerist free market.

I put it to him that he is the atomised modern man he always rails against.

“Yes, yes,” he agrees. “I’m railing against myself. I deplore what I am.”

The photographs in the exhibition cover recognisably Houellebecquian subjects: mass tourism, shopping malls, ugly bits of France, and (almost the only pictures featuring humans) erotic photographs of women.

We leaf through a printout of his photos, and end up studying a half-naked portrait of his ex-girlfriend Esther. He admits she was “a bit the model” for the character Esther in his novel The Possibility of an Island (2005). His photographs feed his writing, he explains. “I always go to a place to take pictures before writing scenes.”

But don’t these erotic pictures support feminist accusations that he treats women as sex objects?

“That one,” he points at Esther, “she is alluring but she isn’t only alluring. That’s not a sex object, it’s an object of love.” And think of the female characters in his novels, he continues. Whereas his standard main male character is lost and weak, “My variety is my female characters. The women are a more diverse world, more distinct personalities.” He speaks softly, slowly, almost as if to himself.

Is he saying he views women as sex objects but also as more than that? “Yes. But I don’t want to reconcile myself with the feminists. Their criticisms are completely idiotic because I’m not misogynist at all. But ‘Islamophobe’, that isn’t wrong.”

He has been called “Islamophobe” at least since the publication of his novel Platform in 2001. The book, which ends with an Islamist assault on a decadent Thai tourist resort, prompted death threats. On September 10 2001 his publisher Flammarion apologised for any offence caused. “You’re saved,” the writer Michel Déon told him the next day as they watched the planes hit the World Trade Center. Submission, Houellebecq’s most recent novel, imagines France electing an Islamist president. The day the book appeared, January 7 2015, terrorists shot up the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris. Houellebecq says, “Enormous numbers of Europeans are now afraid of Islam — and they aren’t wrong to be afraid. Enormous numbers of Arabs are also afraid of Islam, because they were used to a liveable Islam.” He speaks without obvious anger, or indeed any energy at all.

We pour ourselves more wine.

If he despairs of France, as Submission suggests, why stay here? “Because I’m too old to move. It’s too tiring. I ask myself why I returned to France [in 2012, after living in Ireland], and the first idea that came to me was that it was to write Submission. When I left France [in 1999], nobody was talking about Islam. When I returned, people were talking only about that. So, obviously, it struck me.

“Now that the book’s written, I could leave again. This is a bizarre country. Liberty of expression is very restricted. And yet there are always things that emerge.”

What kind of things? “Let’s say Éric Zemmour.” Zemmour is a best-selling far-right polemicist who laments immigration and French decline. Does Houellebecq admire him? “That’s not really my sentiment, but let’s say he has succeeded in existing despite frenetic opposition to him.”

By this point Houellebecq is mumbling almost inaudibly. Yet he seems quite happy to keep answering questions. He gives the impression of having no sense of a schedule, or a busy world outside. Now that he is here, in this empty room, with his bottle of wine, talking about his work, he seems to have abandoned all thought of ever leaving.

More than perhaps any other serious European novelist, Houellebecq reaches a broad public. Submission sold 345,000 copies in France alone in its first 12 days after publication. “Public acclaim”, he says, “has real pertinence. Typically, the public’s judgement of a novel is an emotional judgement of affection or hatred for the characters: ‘I don’t like Esther,’ ‘Chloé disgusts me,’ that sort of thing. It’s a way of reacting to novels that I find very just.”

But public acclaim also disgusts him. He recites some lyrics from the American singer Iggy Pop (with whom he has a mutual admiration society):

You can convince the world
That you’re some kind of superstar
When an asshole is what you are.

“I’m a little bit a star, and I perfectly recognise myself in those words,” he says. “I find that a perfect text. Inside oneself, one knows one is overrated. Still, rather me than someone else. The other writers who take themselves for superstars are actually less good than me. So why not me? Even so, it’s a bit ridiculous.”

I start saying, “Are there no writers today who you . . . ” and Houellebecq interrupts: “No, I am the best.” He then hastens to limit his claim: “I am not the best in general: in the past there were others better than me. But, currently, I am the best.”

I fumble for a retort. Finally, I come up with, “How about Philip Roth?”

“Look, we won’t speak badly of Philip Roth in the interview, there is no purpose in that, but I find that he repeats himself. It’s often the same book, in my view.”

If Houellebecq is the best, how can public and critics overrate him?

“They overrate me because they lack culture. There are always exceptions but in France most people who exercise the function of literary critic have read Céline, a bit of Proust, Camus, Sartre, but they barely know the 19th century. Next to Balzac I am little, tout petit. What I envy in him is this ubiquity that allows him to get into the skin of a labourer, a concierge, a banker. For me that’s the greatest thing.”

As I probe for parallels between Houellebecq and Balzac, Houellebecq says: “He mostly appeared as an essential witness of his era towards the end, and especially after his death. I have become famous earlier in my life than Balzac did.” But Houellebecq grants that he, too, is a significant witness of his era: “I am recognised for that, and rightly so.”

Occasionally as he talks, his eyes slowly slide shut. I worry he will soon be asleep.

What will he write about next? “I’d like to devote myself a bit to the ultra-rich. I feel they have become a central subject.” However: “The fact is that I don’t know the rich. I don’t know how they live. And as a little disciple of the immense Balzac, I’d like to know this world that is closed to me. I’d have to go and see people. And now people distrust me. When they meet me, they know they risk serving as the model for a character. But I’d like to meet the rich. Maybe this article will help.”

I ask whether writers peak and then decline like athletes. Houellebecq replies, “I’m still at a good age. In general, one does best at 60. I believe I can still do one great book. Not two.”

Rumours of his death that flourished in 2011 (after he forgot to show up for a book tour through the Low Countries) were premature. One day, though, the collapse will be complete. Together we examine a photograph of a skull framed by Coca-Cola cans, above a plaque that reads, “Michel HOUELLEBECQ 1958-2037.”

Houellebecq explains: “It’s a present I received by post, a real little mausoleum. An author I don’t know sent it to me, as a sort of homage. I took it as an act of love. I really liked this sculpture, and as I was the only one to like it, I put it in the exhibition. I don’t know who the author is, I’ve lost his details. I hope he will make himself known on the occasion of the exhibition.”

‘Rester vivant’, Palais de Tokyo, Paris 75016, June 23-September 11

Sur le continent by Marie-Pierre Gauthier © Courtesy de l’artiste et Air de Paris, Paris
Clément

One room in the exhibition is a de facto shrine to Houellebecq’s late dog Clément (2000-2011). Houellebecq co-authored the room with ex-wife Marie-Pierre, who made watercolours and a slideshow of their Welsh corgi. “It’s the most autobiographical room in the exhibition,” Houellebecq says in the catalogue.

“The other partly autobiographical room is the one with the women [some of his exes]. I’ve never photographed my life very much, but I think I’ve photographed what counts: a few women, and a dog.” Houellebecq has said: “A dog is like a child, except that a dog never grows up.”

Admiring the pictures of Clément on a printout, he says, “There’s a song Iggy Pop made of a text of mine. He used the [English] translation and it’s better in translation, more brutal:”

What is a dog but a machine for loving?
You introduce him to a human being
giving him the mission to love

Houellebecq expresses for Clément the kind of deep sentiment that other writers express for people. He finds that normal: “I have loved several women but I have only loved one dog. Having said that, I would like to have another dog, but I’m not yet ready to go through the procedure to get a new one.”

When Houellebecq expresses strong feeling for anything, let alone a Welsh corgi, any reader of his novels will suspect irony. But Houellebecq insists: “There is no irony here, none.” He says it’s wrong to see him as a strictly ironic or cynical writer. “I’ve also written poems in which there was zero irony. The irony is more for the novels. But it’s true that my ironic dimension has been much emphasised, and my non-ironic dimension less so.”

He agrees that the sentiments he expresses for Clément echo 19th-century romantic poetry. “I can’t say the contrary because the romanticism of 200 years ago was my first love. In painting, in literature, in music, I adore the romantic movement. I feel I am its distant descendant.”

Inscriptions #013 © Courtesy de l’artiste et Air de Paris, Paris
Il est temps de faire vos jeux

The exhibition opens with this photo taken from Houellebecq’s apartment window. In the reddish sky over Paris’s suburbs, Houellebecq sees a brewing conflict. That feeling is emphasised by a line from one of his poems: “Il est temps de faire vos jeux” (roughly, “It’s time to place your bets”). He says this image contains “a promise of civil war”.

Submission, his most recent novel, also evokes a possible French civil war. Houellebecq explains: “It’s an underlying idea among many Europeans that Europe is heading for a generalised civil war. I think the danger is real.”

Last year’s terrorist attacks on France confirmed his thinking. “Let’s say that the attackers’ objective is clear: to provoke a counter-reaction. The process will really have begun when there are murderous attacks on a mosque or halal business. Then we might fork off into real civil war. Then, objectively, it will be time to ‘place your bets’, to choose sides. I imagine a civil war with assassinations.”

Isis is merely the latest episode in a long story, he believes. “In my adult life I haven’t really known periods without terrorist danger. I think I will never take public transport without fear, without wondering if there’s a package somewhere. If I pass a rubbish bin I always look to see what’s inside.”

He first became aware of terrorism in 1972, with the Palestinian attack on the Munich Olympics. “I began to be personally marked by it after the Hezbollah attacks [in Paris], in 1984 to 1986, because I ought to have been killed by one of them. I was five minutes from the spot. From that moment on, I felt I would live with that as long as I stay in Europe.”

Espagne #001 © Courtesy de l’artiste et Air de Paris, Paris
Children’s playground

Soon after Houellebecq bought his holiday home in Alméria, southeastern Spain, the financial crisis struck. Local construction of resorts pretty much ceased. That gave him the perfect view of a subject that fascinates him: failed mass tourism.

“It was a great failure,” he recalls. “Buildings were stopped mid-construction. Those that were finished never found buyers.” Hence this photograph (in screaming colours, like his other photographs of mass tourism) of a children’s playground without children. Houellebecq says that abandoned places “have a very post-apocalyptic aspect”.

He muses, “I saw a film made by a Frenchman, I think, about Detroit. I’m not saying this cynically, but it makes you want to take pictures. It’s the end of the automobile industry, if I understood rightly. If you want to say it in more general or theological terms, it raises a question I often ask myself: ‘What will remain of humanity after humanity?’”

He answers himself: “Some objects will remain. There’s a text in one of my novels about the Rolleiflex camera. I think a double-objective Rolleiflex will last for centuries. It’s really well made. I’m much less sure about the iPhone.”

France #014 © Courtesy de l’artiste et Air de Paris, Paris
Europe

Some time in the early 1990s, Houellebecq visited Calais with members of the eloquently named movement “les banalystes”. He took this photograph at the “Europe” shopping mall. In the exhibition catalogue he says of the photo: “There’s both a coercive side, and a rapid degradation process, which nicely sums up what I think about Europe.”

Now he adds: “What’s very amusing is that the opening of the exhibition will coincide with a possible Brexit. It’s June 23 [when the UK holds its referendum on membership of the European Union]. It’s going to be hot!”

He is rooting for Brexit: “I’d love it. I’d love it if the English gave the starting signal for the dismantling. I hope they won’t disappoint me. I’ve been against the [European] idea from the start. It’s not democratic, it’s not good.

“I really like England, I really like the fact of it having been the only country, for quite a while, to have resisted Hitler. I’d really like it to leave, to signal the independence movement.”

But his political engagement doesn’t extend to the US: “Trump I don’t care about. We have to disconnect from the US. They aren’t the masters of the world anymore. They aren’t our bosses. Now there are other countries, there’s China, India. American problems aren’t mine. Trump is dreadful but he’s their problem. But England is a bit my problem.

France #033 © Courtesy de l’artiste et Air de Paris, Paris
Avallon suburbs:

Despite suffering from vertigo, Houellebecq took this photo from a hot-air balloon over Avallon, in the Yonne region of northern France. The vantage-point in the sky is the one he occupies in his frequent dreams of flying.

In his photographs as in his novels, Houellebecq is drawn to France’s unlovely modern exurbs. “I don’t love them,” he explains, “but those are the places I know the best. That’s where I grew up. So I get my bearings easily. I know how these places are organised — well, they aren’t very organised, but I know what happens there.

“Where I spent my adolescence was a peri-urban zone at the time. It was about 50 kilometres from Paris. I went back there, and in the meantime they had built Euro Disney. It had become very, very bizarre, because there were lots more train and bus lines and yet there weren’t really any shops. It’s a bit chaotic. I didn’t know all these new bus lines, there were zones that hadn’t been built when I was there, new neighbourhoods. It’s disturbing.

“The peri-urban, for me, is the kind of chaos that has been much expanded in recent times. It starts about 20 kilometres from Paris, and ends 100 kilometres from Paris. It’s in this kind of place that most people now live.” And yet, he complains, few novelists write about such places. “It’s true that they are more difficult to describe.”

Rich Parisians are expected to live in the city’s chic old neighbourhoods but Houellebecq says: “I’m not in love with Paris. Often they tell me I should live in Saint-Germain-des-Prés but I don’t feel like it.” Instead, he lives in one of Paris’s few high-rises, near the Place d’Italie, close to the ring road.

France #002 © Courtesy de l’artiste et Air de Paris, Paris
Leader Price

Houellebecq is a connoisseur of supermarkets — a “modern paradise”, he has called them. In the exhibition catalogue he says that “hard discount” (an English marketing phrase that delights him) “comes from an advanced stage of civilisation, because it doesn’t exist among people who just have small businesses and then nature”.

This photograph depicts what he believes will be a surviving monument of our civilisation. Millennia from now, he says, this Leader Price supermarket in France’s rural Auvergne region still won’t have returned to nature.

He says part of the impact of the photo comes from the English words, “Leader Price”. “The English language goes well with the brutal message. It’s an advantage in rock music, the brutality of the language.” Perhaps, he reflects, French — as a more abstract language — tends to be “more euphemistic”.

Main photograph: Barbara d’Alessandri/Starface

Exhibition images: courtesy of the artist and Air de Paris, Paris

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