Michel Houellebecq on Desire and the Collapse of Western Civilization

This famous French novelist is a student of Schopenhauer — and a controversial prophet of pessimism

Photo by Raph Howald on Unsplash

Not to worry if you don’t recognize the name Michel Houellebecq. He’s quite famous in Europe, where literary figures are often celebrities — especially if they act out in public, or write controversial novels.

And Houellebecq (pronounced “well-beck”) qualifies on both counts.

There’s more about those qualifications below. But because I’ve been writing about Arthur Schopenhauer lately(quick intro/refresher here), I’m focusing on the fact that Houellebecq has written a short, oddly confessional book titled En présence de Schopenhauer.

To appreciate why a notorious, ultra-contemporary French author is writing about his relationship with a 19th-century German philosopher, you will want to have a basic idea of Houellebecq’s work.

So . . .

Meet Monsieur Houellebecq

Over the course of seven novels written between 1994 and 2019, Michel Houellebecq has presented a dark vision of our evolving Western culture.