In the Drawers of Michel Houellebecq, Bruno Viard

Houellebecq's work is full of apparent contradictions. The aim of this short essay is to analyze them in order to show that they can, to some extent, be resolved, particularly by drawing on the sources: Houellebecq's readings, these "drawers" that contain fictional or autobiographical works as well as theoretical writings.Thus, at a lively pace, we see Auguste Comte, Pierre Leroux, Tocqueville, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Montaigne, Victor Hugo, Camus, Balzac, Baudelaire, Proust, and others.Added to this are equally stimulating observations, such as this one: "We have reached the paradox where the anti-liberal left in economics has become liberal in morality, while the liberal right in economics has found itself anti-liberal in morality. Houellebecq's originality is that he is anti-liberal in everything, which makes him unclassifiable."