Hof/Haan — Uproar

18 February 2024 · Martin de Haan

At the end of last year, De Arbeiderspers published the third, once again revised and expanded edition of my book Aan de rand van de wereld: Michel Houellebecq. Compared with the previous edition, from 2019, five new pieces have been added: “Houellebecq, translating”, “In praise of femininity”, “Compassion”, “Decreasing disorder” and “Uproar”. One piece has been dropped: “Rose petal”. The photo section has also been revised, particularly through the addition of a series of portraits in absentia that I was allowed to make at Houellebecq’s home in 2019, previously published in de Volkskrant. Below is “Uproar”, about two matters that unfortunately still cause an uproar.

There are two things I have at times found quite difficult while translating Houellebecq’s work: his obsession with sex, whether or not as metaphysics, and his unsubtle attitude towards Islam. Other things that upset some people, such as his alleged misogyny and his fight against the anything-goes culture, trouble me less, with an occasional exception — his downplaying of Russian aggression in Ukraine, for example. But, as chance would have it, 2023 brought together precisely the two things I find difficult, in a way that made me long intensely for a world without Houellebecq for several months. In principle, the two “affairs” that followed one another so closely have nothing whatsoever to do with one another — it is not about Muslim sex — but emotionally they immediately became entangled for me. And not only for me, since Houellebecq himself wrote a little book about them in record time, A Few Months in My Life. So I had to get straight back to work, while I was still recovering from Annihilation, not to mention all the overdue work I had, and still have, waiting on the shelf.

Just as I finish writing this first paragraph, the doorbell rings: a delivery service, with my author’s copies of the little book in question, the Dutch edition, that is. And ten minutes later, again: another delivery service, this time with the portrait of Houellebecq painted by Aad van der Meer, a Dutch painter living in Mexico, which he is giving me as a thank-you for my translations. The dream of a world without Houellebecq does not seem very realistic… But both the book and the portrait look wonderful, it is a glorious late-summer day in Burgundy, and I am already starting to forget the two affairs a little: high time, indeed, to write briefly about them.

The theme of “Islam”, which had previously arisen mainly in and around the novels Platform and Submission, resurfaced rather abruptly at the end of 2022 in a long conversation between Houellebecq and the populist philosopher Michel Onfray, published in the latter’s magazine Front populaire, named after the left-wing coalition that formed the French government from 1936 to 1938. In it, Houellebecq made several statements that, with a degree of ill will, could be read as Islamophobic, especially these: “I think what the ‘native’ French, as they are called, want is not for Muslims to adapt, but simply for them to stop robbing and attacking them — in short, to respect the law and respect them. Or else, another good solution, for them to leave again.” And: “When entire areas really come under Islamist control, I think acts of resistance will take place. There will be attacks and shootings in mosques, in cafés where many Muslims go — Bataclans in reverse, in short. And Muslims will not respond only with candles and bouquets of flowers. So yes, things could move very quickly.”

Naturally, half of left-wing France descended on him, led by the newspaper Libération: there you have it, Houellebecq is a far-right demagogue calling for violence against Muslims — “Bataclans in reverse”. That did not strike me as very logical, given his basic position, which is that of an observer. What I read in it was rather that he fears a major conflict because he sees tensions between groups in the population rising too high. Nothing in his formulation suggests that he regards himself as part of those angry “native French, as they are called”; he merely believes he knows how that supposedly homogeneous group feels and thinks. Incidentally, the French says “les Français de souche”, which evokes a somewhat lower social class even more than the Dutch “autochtone Fransen” does. And Bataclans in reverse — well, unfortunately they have already happened; think of the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. So the idea as such can hardly be called far-fetched. That does not alter the fact that Houellebecq presents things in very stark black and white. After a good conversation with the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, he thought so himself, as he writes in A Few Months in My Life: “It is understandable that, on reading that text, the rector […] understood: ‘You are saying Muslims are all thieves.’ I sincerely regret that, and I apologise to all Muslims who feel offended by it — which, I fear, is just about all Muslims. Those words did not express what I thought; in fact I thought more or less the opposite. That is why I have no hesitation in distancing myself from that idiotic text […].” After which he replaces the passage with a new, far more nuanced one.

All’s well that ends well? Not quite, because later in the conversation with Onfray, the famous theory of the grand remplacement also comes up: the idea, originating with writer Renaud Camus, that migration flows are gradually “replacing” Europe’s population. Houellebecq does not mince his words on that thorny issue either: “First of all, I was deeply shocked that people call it a theory. It isn’t a theory; it’s a fact.” A wonderful quotation with which to pillory him, and many French and foreign media, including Dutch and Belgian outlets, duly did so, following Libération’s lead: there you have it, Houellebecq is a far-right conspiracy theorist. I said at the beginning of this book that I feel no need to defend him, and I still do not, but now I must, briefly, my dear friends on the left. Ripping a quotation like that out of context — and, for foreign media, parroting a French newspaper without looking at the source yourself — is lazy character assassination. Houellebecq, whom Libération immediately also called a friend of Renaud Camus, goes on: “I hadn’t read Renaud Camus. I’d wanted to read him for a very long time, because I think highly of Emmanuel Carrère and he has written several times that it is ‘such a shame Renaud Camus expresses those views; he’s such a good writer!’ Anyway, I finally read him, and it’s true: Renaud Camus is a good writer, there is no doubt about that. So he established that a grand remplacement is taking place, or, more precisely, a change in the ethnic and religious composition of Europe’s population. That is a statistical fact. But, contrary to my expectations, I do see traces of conspiracy thinking in him. That an obviously intelligent man could come up with the idea of a conspiracy supposedly devised by what he calls the ‘Davocrats’, a kind of group that supposedly emerged from the World Economic Forum in Davos, I found astonishing. To me it is absolutely clear that there is no conspiracy whatsoever. Nobody is pulling the strings on immigration; that is precisely the whole problem. There is only an overwhelming demographic reality.” He then contrasts Africa’s explosive population growth with Europe’s low birth rate and concludes that the rest is pure hydraulics — the ethnic consequences of which do not worry him particularly, but the religious consequences all the more.

Ah, there you have it, Houellebecq is Islamophobic: he thinks Europe will be engulfed by a Muslim tsunami! No, not even that: “At bottom, I have to admit I haven’t the faintest idea about the religious dimension of the grand remplacement. I am not informed, so I don’t know which religion the people coming to Europe in ever greater numbers belong to. That makes quite a difference. The widespread assumption is that many are Muslims. But there are also more and more evangelicals in Africa. And what happens will depend greatly on that variable. There are already religious wars in Africa, with Boko Haram, for instance. Those can be exported without any difficulty. But I don’t feel able to assess the religious balance of power in the future.”

Houellebecq is and remains an observer, albeit sometimes a frightened observer, as he makes clear in A Few Months in My Life: “I continued to see unconditional acceptance of migrants as a mistake. Forcing entire populations to take in loads of newcomers with ever greater reluctance and anger reminded me a little of fattening geese; it seemed impossible in the medium term, even suicidal: you cannot govern a people against its will for ever. Even Machiavelli would not have contradicted me.” Yes, no doubt, but didn’t you yourself say that nobody was pulling the strings on immigration and that it was all pure hydraulics? It looks like an excellent scenario for the next Houellebecq novel, following the tried-and-tested formula of increasing disorder, literally fuelled by global warming.

For a while, incidentally, I seriously wondered whether there would ever be another Houellebecq novel, which brings us to the other affair — or let me simply call it a farce, because that is what it is. Briefly, insofar as the facts can be reconstructed, and the sheer impossibility of that task is precisely one of the farcical aspects of the whole affair: Houellebecq and his wife let themselves be filmed in Paris having sex with a young Dutch woman; a month and a half later, they go to Amsterdam for a new project with the same filmmaker; they sign a contract waiving all their rights and agreeing to the use of all footage he has or acquires over the period from 1 November 2022 to 31 December 2023; they do not enjoy themselves and participate only half-heartedly in the new project; they return to Paris; they fly to Guadeloupe for the shooting of a feature film by Guillaume Nicloux; they return to Paris and, according to Houellebecq, are then horrified by the signed contract, which authorises the filmmaker also to use and publish the pornographic footage of the Paris encounter. A first court case follows in France, which Houellebecq loses: he is referred to the Dutch courts. A second follows in Amsterdam, which he also loses, and finally an appeal, in which the judge rules that Houellebecq must be given access to the finished film and return to court if he wishes to challenge its content.

All this was accompanied by fierce public abuse from both sides, not to mention everything that happened in private. And here too, fact-free perceptions took over. According to some, Houellebecq was the latest victim of a ruthless, narcissistic pseudo-artist and a few young women desperate for sex, money and fame. According to others, he was simply a dirty old man following his dick, encouraged by his young wife. As for the latter, as far as I know he has done that throughout his writing life, quite openly, incidentally, and, to my knowledge, with the full consent of the free spirits and bodies who offer themselves to him. He has no need of an Amsterdam connection for that. I find the first account harder to judge. My personal impression is rather that the Amsterdam filmmaker wanted to enlist Houellebecq precisely because he greatly admired him, leaving the major question of why the collaboration went wrong at all. That this really was not a publicity stunt by the writer to launch the Dutch translation of his new novel Annihilation in the Netherlands — a third fact-free hypothesis I have encountered — I can personally testify to. I had him on the phone in a state of great panic several times, with, among other things, a solemn assurance that because of this affair he would never publish anything again. With A Few Months in My Life, he has at least broken that promise.

What seems to me to dominate Houellebecq’s self-defence, as fierce as it is implausible, and full of continuity errors — there they are again! — is shame. Shame at being handed over to the public in all his physical and mental nakedness. There is undoubtedly far more pornographic footage of him, even if only footage he made himself. But precisely because sex with many different partners is such a large part of his life, he probably crossed a boundary without noticing: the boundary between private and public. He called himself utterly stupid when I asked how he could ever have signed such a contract, and I completely believe him, although personally I cannot imagine how anyone could sign a contract for a pornographic film project without reading it carefully. But I know that many translators do not read what their publishers send them either. And precisely that regret over what has been done seems to me the most important point in this whole farce. If, as a filmmaker, you want to make a film with a famous writer for whom you have boundless admiration, and on reflection that writer would rather not be seen fucking by anyone who cares to watch, why not respect that wish? Why insist in court on upholding a bizarre contract that strips the writer of all his rights, even if he was foolish enough to sign it? Perhaps there are good reasons, but I do not know and/or understand them.

I began this piece by saying that I find Houellebecq’s obsession with sex difficult, and I want to end there too. In A Few Months in My Life, he explains, to my mind convincingly, why he wants to record his own acts of love on film, and even why he likes watching other people’s amateur pornography: because of the love and generosity it expresses. That same love and generosity also speak from some of the sex passages in his own novels, their counterpart being the mechanical, loveless sex passages that instead recall the porn industry. And yet I do not enjoy reading even those loving sex passages, for precisely the same reason that I think underlies his regret over what happened: what takes place in the private sphere should remain there, otherwise it becomes banal, vulgar or embarrassing. That is called civilisation: presenting yourself to the outside world as less animal than you are.

But the novel is precisely the literary genre that addresses the private sphere, the genre that can, may and often even must break through the illusion of civilisation. Even if that makes the reader or translator uncomfortable.