El País — Michel Houellebecq: “When I look in the mirror, I scare myself”

The French writer speaks to EL PAÍS about the emotional impact of the controversy surrounding the experimental Dutch film in which he appears having sex. He also discusses literature, pension reform and Emmanuel Macron.

Marc Bassets · Paris · 1 April 2023, 03:30 UTC

Michel Houellebecq is going through an existential rough patch, and he describes it without mincing words. “I’m doing very badly, yes,” the French writer tells EL PAÍS. “I feel rage, and I want to hurt the person pursuing me, but that isn’t possible. And I feel shame, not only out of modesty, but because I’ve been taken for a ride.”

The cause of the crisis is the experimental film Kirac 27, by Dutch artist Stefan Ruitenbeek, a member of the KIRAC collective, in which Houellebecq, born on Réunion and now 67, supposedly appears having sexual intercourse. The author of Serotonin and Annihilation has tried to stop its release in court, without success. On Tuesday, a court in Amsterdam gave Ruitenbeek the go-ahead after a Paris court had done the same a few weeks earlier.

There is a contract involved, and consenting adults who allowed themselves to be filmed, but the lead actor considers himself deceived by Ruitenbeek. He is currently in his Paris apartment, with no desire to go out, still less to be photographed. And he says he does not know what to do.

Q. Will you appeal against the Dutch court’s decision?

A. For now, I don’t know. In my opinion, my chances of success are almost nil.

Q. What will you do if it is released?

A. Look, initially, nothing. I don’t know.

Q. Does it distress you that the film could be seen by everyone?

A. Yes, very much. I don’t want to appear in this film against my will. It’s very unpleasant.

Houellebecq speaks softly and slowly, in a monotone. He leaves long silences before replying. He thinks about his answers. “Yes, I was very stupid,” he says at one point during the telephone conversation, which took place early on Friday afternoon. He recalls that in November he had a sexual encounter in Paris involving himself, his wife Qianyum Lysis Li and the Dutchwoman Jini van Rooijen.

Ruitenbeek filmed the scene. It was intended for Van Rooijen’s account on the adult-content platform OnlyFans. But Houellebecq says he ultimately preferred that it not be shown, still less that Ruitenbeek use it for the film project they were going to begin together in Amsterdam at the end of December, for which they signed a contract that Houellebecq now repudiates.

Another scene was later shot showing Houellebecq kissing a woman in a hotel bed, a moment that appears in a trailer for the film. A few days later, the writer and filmmaker began their dispute. “Yes, I was unquestionably naïve,” he acknowledges. “I’m not the only one, actually. It happens with insurance contracts, which people sign without really reading them. My agent — because I do have an agent — did the sums, and since we’ve known each other he has had me sign about 400 contracts. I’ve got used to trusting, to signing without reading.”

Q. Do you feel embarrassed at the thought that it might be released and many people might see you in a very intimate situation?

A. I feel, though much less intensely, more or less what women who have been raped feel. I have the impression that my body doesn’t belong to me. I also have the impression that I feel shame. And the third thing is a distrust and a lack of interest in sexual relations now. It’s painful.

Q. Since this episode?

A. Yes, since this episode I haven’t had sexual relations at all.

Q. Because of this?

A. A distrust has taken hold of me.

Q. Fear of sex?

A. Yes… The idea that there’s something dangerous, that you have to be wary.

The conversation moves into intimate, delicate territory. Houellebecq is one of those writers who writes and expresses opinions without a safety net. His sex scenes are his trademark. Modesty is not exactly his thing, though he has almost always told it through fiction. Not this time. When we ask whether he can specify what he means by the lack of confidence, he replies: “It’s simply that I can’t get it up. I don’t know… I think women who have been raped also can’t manage to sleep with their husbands.”

Q. A moment ago you said that, less intensely, you feel what a woman who has been raped feels.

A. I think it’s worse for a woman who has been raped, and the worst of the worst is when the rapist posts the rape online. I find it hard to imagine how she might feel. I can imagine it, but by multiplying what I feel by ten. It’s a very painful situation.

Houellebecq wants to write a book about the episode involving the Dutch film. It is his immediate project: “I’ll change people’s names, except mine. I’ll write it in the first person. I think it’s more or less the only thing I know how to do, and it might do me good by helping me destroy the memory.” He explains that he is currently reading Sinclair Lewis’s novel Babbitt. And when we ask whether he reads Spanish literature, he mentions Javier Cercas. “And another whose name I can’t remember, he writes rather dark books… Isn’t there someone called Antonio Muñoz Molina?” Among his French contemporaries, he praises Emmanuel Carrère. “French literature isn’t doing at all badly at the moment,” he says. Three Nobel Prizes in fifteen years testify to that. “Yes,” he agrees, “Modiano isn’t bad at all.”

Q. And Annie Ernaux? She didn’t have kind words for you after winning the Nobel.

A. To be honest, I haven’t really read her. I won’t say anything bad about her because I don’t know her work well.

Q. Do you dream of the Nobel?

A. I have very little chance, because quite a few French people have won it recently.

Q. People say it is also for ideological reasons.

A. Yes, that may play a role. And there is something else: in France, I’m not one of the universities’ favourite authors. There are more theses about Annie Ernaux than about me. I don’t think the Nobel jury has time to read everything. They must make a preliminary selection based on the number of academic studies devoted to an author. I suppose that plays a role.

Q. You are considered a reactionary writer. Does that bother you? Is the label fair? Unfair?

A. I don’t think it’s fundamentally fair, because to be a reactionary it isn’t enough to think society was better in some respects before. You also have to tell yourself that we can go back, and I don’t believe that. I tend to think we never go back. All historical movements have something irreversible about them. So to want to go back you have to imagine that it’s possible, and I don’t imagine that.

Houellebecq brings up the conversation he had last autumn with the intellectual Michel Onfray, which led the Grand Mosque of Paris to file a complaint against him for inciting hatred against Muslims. After he met the mosque’s rector, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, the rector withdrew the complaint and Houellebecq corrected some of his remarks. “Yes, some paragraphs were stupid,” he acknowledges. He adds: “That was more conventional than the present case, because I’ve held opinions that caused controversies because they shocked many people. Now it isn’t my opinions: it’s my body being attacked. That had never happened to me.”

Q. In your interview with Onfray, you expressed fear of a civil war in France.

A. I corrected that afterwards. I don’t believe it. For several reasons. A civil war requires many elements. It isn’t true that the police can’t enter certain neighbourhoods. They have to go in with armoured units, they are attacked, but they manage. For there to be a civil war, it would have to be impossible for even the army to enter certain neighbourhoods, and we are far from that. In a civil war, like Spain’s, some areas are controlled by one side and others by the other. So no, I don’t believe there will be a civil war in the immediate future.

Q. Abroad, people are struck by the way France is rising up against pension reform, with images of demonstrations, burning rubbish…

A. The French have been asked for a long time whether they are for or against this pension reform, and they have been against it from the beginning. People continue to support the strikes, even though it bothers them that the trains aren’t running or the rubbish isn’t being collected. The government’s obstinacy is really surprising. I don’t think it will manage to carry out the reform. The unions feel supported and will continue.

Q. You know Emmanuel Macron. How do you see him today?

A. He isn’t easy to understand. I think he has a strong sense of intellectual superiority and doesn’t understand the situation. He still believes he’s young, that he has shaken everything up and is going to shake everything up. Politically, that’s true. He has destroyed the left, the Socialist Party, and almost destroyed the right-wing party, the Republicans. His operation has succeeded; he has built a central bloc that holds a majority. What I’m about to say is a banal thought, but presidents of the Republic tend to lose touch.

Q. Did you vote for Macron?

A. That shouldn’t be said. First, because I support the secret ballot; it’s an important principle. And I don’t want to try to influence my readers. That isn’t my idea of my relationship with the reader.

Before ending the interview, we ask Houellebecq whether we may come to his home to photograph him. He replies: “I would really prefer not to. I’m in a sorry state. I look exhausted. When I look in the mirror, I scare myself. I don’t sleep. It isn’t the best moment.”