We seem not to want to settle with what we have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What do we actually want? What are we looking for? When we stand still for a moment thinking about these questions, more will come up: Why do we want what we want, why are we looking for this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Us humans in our Western societies \u2013 I hesitate to speak for people from a different cultural background and would assume that this applies for Michel Houellebecq as well \u2013 often show signs of selfdestruction. It is no news that we tend to especially see and focus on the negative sides of our being and our environment. We want more, something different, exceed the last experience, highlight we have had. This certainly also applies to sex, Houellebecq\u00b4s starting point for almost all his reflection on our social co-existence. It has to be better, hotter, with new partners, more extreme each time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Serotonin<\/em>, of course, sex plays a major role. The reader comes across cunts, asses, anal intercourse, blowjobs. At a certain point you become tired of it in this novel, at least I did. In the first half of the book, it seems that there does not happen too much else which is worth mentioning in a book review. It is very much in the face<\/em>. The main character, 46 years of age and depressive, is stuck in a relation with a Japanese girl 20 years his junior. She, as it turns out, is not only very materialistic and spends hours on her body care and porcelain teint, but also actively participates in orgies and has herself… raped? sodomised? physically loved? by a Doberman and some other dog in front of a camera. Fine, you think, the strange Frenchman has added another highlight to the many perversities in his \u0153uvre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sociopolitics is another recurring theme in Houellebecq\u00b4s work. This time his critical view on neoliberal politics culminates in a showdown where loosers of the current economical policies, facing the full police power of the state, mediagenically commit suicide. An outcry against the consequences of the free movement of goods in the European Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When one reads the first reviews on Serotonin<\/em> \u2013 the book was released in France, Germany, Italy and Spain in January 2019 \u2013 then those are more or less the centerpieces of the articles. Well, not in the review in Le Figaro by Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Beigbeder, Houellebecq\u00b4s friend and best man, but in many others. Most publicists are looking for the scandal when turning to Houellebecq, the headlines, what did he dare to put on paper this time? Dirty sex? Or, even worse, damning our political order, the Eurpoean Union, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, the union which was once based on the idea to bring the European people<\/em> closer together? It seems that they do not take a look behind the curtain, do not ask the questions which he asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, his previous novel Submission<\/em> was not about a threat of Islamic conquest. Not at all. Houellebecq held up a mirror to the reader, to our Western society. The exhaustion of the Occident, as the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung<\/em> put it in bold print (for good order\u00b4s sake: this bonmot was coined by the French author Philippe Muray), an exhaustion of the people in our neoliberal consumer culture. Nothing more to add. Always the same, just more of it. No ideals, no visions, no social affinities, no happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, in his article about Donald Trump in Harper\u00b4s Magazine<\/em> (1\/2019) Houellebecq did not say that he agreed to Trump\u00b4s racism, populism, ignorance. He literally described him as an appalling clown. What Houellebecq said was that he agreed to the termination of international trade contracts (in Serotonin<\/em>, local producers in Portugal, Greece and Eastern Europe will recognise their situation) and military interventions abroad. Those issues made a few already privileged people even richer and brought grief to many more people. Yes, also and certainly under Obama. Obama had the chance to implement substantial changes as from 2009 on and not even missed it but quietly and intentionally let it go. But if you do not want to hear that then you read Houellebecq\u00b4s piece under the impression of the catchy headline \u201eTrump Is A Good President\u201c: Whaaat? How does he dare? Scandalous!<\/em> It is tiresome, this lack of reflection, this simple choice for a good selling point. This circumvention of inconvenient questions. This reading of Houellebecq might result from a deeper motivation. As Michael Lewis put it in The Fifth Risk:<\/em> \u201cIf you want to preserve your personal immunity, it’s better never to really understand those problems. There is an upside to ignorance and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes the world messier.\u201c <\/p>\n\n\n\n Renowned intellectual Iris Radisch of German newspaper Die Zeit <\/em>did not want to think about radical changes. She cried out loud about the illiberal ideas of Houellebecq, him favouring an end to NATO and the EU, his nationalistic approach. She and her colleague Adam Soboczynski begin their articles with calling Houellebecq antiliberal resp. new-right and this way avoid any discussion of his observations on the state of our society. I mean, you do not need to agree with his position, it is not about partisanship (take a look at the USA to know that this is something we better never experience at this side of the Atlantic Ocean). Take his provocations as a challenge, a challenge to think about us. Also on the center-left, by the way, you will find the idea that the EU in its current form is highly undemocratic and a dead-end. Read Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Yanis Varoufakis and Ulrike Gu\u00e9rot, to name only three authors who have thought deeply about it. They are all but suspicious of antiliberalism or right-wing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apart from reflecting on the explicit sex scenes reviews of Serotonin <\/em>also repeatedly elaborate extensively on the role of women in Houellebecq\u00b4s novels (they would always be a sidekick and reduced to sex, never play a major role) and his provocative political visions (he would serve the populist-nationalist agenda). Many of them miss the point and remain superficial, in my humble opinion. Take the statement by Houllebecq\u00b4s French publisher, praising him as a seer foreseeing the gilets jeune<\/em>. Which was happily reproduced by many reviewers. Far from correct. The protesters in Serotonin<\/em> do neither have more in common with the gilets jeune<\/em> than that they are taking to the streets protesting against the government policy nor is Houellebecq\u00b4s story visionary in this regard: in recent years, French farmers set up road blocks more than once to protest against agricultural policy proclaimed by the French government and the European Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What regards women, somebody who contributes significantly to the public discussion for more than 20 years and, I dare to state, must be taken seriously, let him speak and listen to him. Enter into a discussion with him. Again, think over his views and, if you feel so, debunk him. But to opt for taunting the author with him not writing about other things (e.g. strong female characters and their view of the world) which he might not know much about dries up the discussion before it even started. Houellebecq probably cannot or does not want to write from the perspective of a woman or about strong women. Just like he does not write a major family epos like the Buddenbrooks<\/em> or continuously recurs to the the holocaust like Harry Mulisch or surprises with an intellegently constructed novel like Lisa Halliday\u00b4s debut. A sharp and ruthless account of society from a woman\u00b4s perspective must come from someone else, not from Houellebecq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back to Serotonin<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, having read all his previous works I was not impressed by Serotonin<\/em> when half-way through the novel. More of the same, all too familiar, what we know from him from his other books, only with less of a message, it seemed to me. Reading it and following its main character vaguely reminded of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho<\/em>, however with less self-confidence and no phantasies of killing others (ok, in two situations he does, briefly, but without celebrating it). Money, status, brandnames, promiscuity. Whereas… in the background, under all this sex and melancholy and depression, there is a constant undertone. The protagonist tells about girl-friends in past tense only. Under all this explicit language the reader meets two of these women repeatedly. Two relations which he truly enjoyed, times in his life in which he was unconditionally happy. One of those two he dumped, the other left him in tears, deeply hurt. The first because she went back home abroad and hey, there are plenty of other opportunities nearby in Paris. The second because his colleague had such an attractive arse that, naturally, he found it a good idea to dig deeper into it. Take what you can get, when you can get it. More. Go for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The places in Paris where he was happy with these two women deeply move him when he happens to occasionally pass by. He cannot stand being there, with his memories, when he was happy, what he had had and left for… for what actually? The next woman? Something, someone better? More of \u2026 what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The middle-aged protagonist, ever more depressive, consults a doctor. Only with a new antidepressant which provides for sufficient serotonin in his blood (but, at the same time, kills his libido) he reaches an equilibrium \u2013 in emptiness, though. A year further his doctor diagnoses from his blood parameters the abundance of the hormon Cortisol. For the doctor, this is an indication that the protagonist must be troubled, sad, menlancholic beyond imagination. The drug meant a killing of the accustomed habit of always<\/em> wanting more <\/em>at the cost of living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Late in the novel, the main character observes a remote hut in the hillside at a lake in Normandy for weeks where Camille, his love once, lives with her son. He becomes aware of the fact that he could have been happy even there with her, far from everything, from all influences, stimulants, people, expectations, a long time ago. Whereas \u2026 even<\/em>? Why even? Isn\u00b4t this actually what always would suffice? Take a look at us: We look at pictures of faraway places, full of desire to enjoy them, a simpel life, we go on vacation to remote destinations and dream of living there in peace. And still, we always return to our familiar life, the hectic and stress, we do not dare to change anything, our customs, jobs, striving to earn more, working on greater projects, prestige, money, buying things, evade from the illusions of the all too present advertising, what we are, what we should be, what we should be after. e do not see what we have, do not enjoy what we have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The US talkshow host Bill Maher nailed it in his show on 15 February 2019 when he had it over the TV dating show Temptation Island: \u201eA show where hot people dating hot people are in search of hotter people. `I love what I have with Trevon but I wonder if there is someone more perfect for me\u00b4 \u2013 there isn\u00b4t. That new asshole in the tanktop is the same as your asshole in the tanktop. This is the real problem in our society. Looking for an excuse to dump someone. Someone good. Because there must be someone more perfect.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n More perfect<\/em>? What is it that we constantly seem to be looking for? Can\u00b4t we just at a certain moment in time \u2013 be happy with what we have and what we are? Do we dare to think like this? Houellebecq is asking these questions in Serotonin<\/em>. In his late twenties, his main character had all at hand to live a happy and relaxed life with a wonderful partner at his side. He threw it away because he thought that there would be more, something else possible, waiting for him. He was right. It was a stream of short, flashing, intense highlights followed by ever greater and deeper phases of depression. In fact, this is the logical consequence in extremis <\/em>of our way of living, the individualistic isolation which Houellebecq had already addressed in a speech in Berlin in 2016. It was not worth it is the conclusion of the protagonist at the age of 46. The only way to escape this vicious circle is to turn to drugs which make you numb and turn you into a ghost. When we take a look around us this seems to be all too familiar. Houellebecq makes us look into a mirror, again. He shows us the abyss. We may, we can choose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PS: If there is anybody who can tell me how Florent-Claude knows how old Camille\u00b4s son is and under which circumstances he was fathered, I am happy to hear that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n June 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We seem not to want to settle with what we have. What do we actually want? What are we looking for? 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