Platform

Rating:
Summary: Houellebecq's best.
Review: I've read both of Michel Houllebecq's previous books -- Whatever and The Elementary Particles -- and found them difficult, at times tiresome. However, I purchased Platform because he is a fabulous writer and, moreover, beneath all the nihilism and scorn and complaint, Houllebecq, unlike most writers, has a world view and an opinion. So I gave him a third try. Of his three novels, I find this to be his best, by far. It is funny, sad, frightening, depressing, oddly uplifting, angry, timely, and truthful. For me, Platform felt like an odd hybrid of Camus' The Stranger and Philip Roth's Zuckerman books. For those who believe that there is still such a thing as an "important" book, this qualifies.

Rating:
Summary: talking nonsense
Review: if you want to be turned on and require better reading material than playboy then i would recommend "the platform' otherwise i defer to voltaire who said, wherever you go in france you will find that the three chief occupations are making love, backbiting and talking nonsense. to that i say, pretty much. it's hard to believe that so many people are willing to accept tired trite 'theories' on black women, latin women, yellow women, white women as high powered intellectual stuff. this is no different from 17th century french porn that obsessed about the size and specialities of black genitalia and pretended to call it science.

Rating:
Summary: Sex and Philosophy
Review: Michel Houellebecq is a writer who likes to challenge his readers. His unique blend of graphic sex and philosophical musing seem distinctively French. I haven't seen a similar blend in American writers, who tend more towards idealistic puritanism.

The narrator here, who is a removed and cynical individual as in the other Houellebecq works I have read...goes through transformations in this work. At first, he is a mid-level bureaucrat enjoying a prepackaged Thai tour. He has little respect for the other Frenchmen on the tour but enjoys his brief sojourns to the massage parlors, if only temporarily. He seems as one resigned to fate, who is used to happiness being rationed in tiny portions.

Upon returning to France, the narrator Michel establishes a relationship with Valerie. How this exactly happens is unclear. In French writings, the existentialist tendency of things happening to the narrator seems to outweigh the narrator's ability to make things happen. (Somewhat like Vonnegut.) While it seems unlikely that an antisocial mid-level bureaucrat would find love with an attractive and successful woman like Valerie, it allows us to see the transformation of Michel-- not necessarily into someone more idealistic, but someone more capable of happiness.

I won't discuss the ending, as I read about the ending and its overhyped comparisons to "real events" prior to reading the novel, and this somewhat spoiled the experience of reading it. Suffice to say that in Houellebecq's worldview, happiness is a fleeting sensation in a world defined by tragedy.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book...

Rating:
Summary: Sex, terrorism and being given a second chance
Review: Michel Houllebecq's Platform is a provocative, memorable and ambitious work that is absolutely cutting and acerbic in its tone and content. The lead protagonist is so beautifully drawn, and such a well-rounded, multi-dimensional character that the reader is just left reeling in awe at Houllebecq's skill in creating him. Michel, disaffected, detached and very cynical - eking out an existence of prepackaged pleasure on TV dinners, hollow friendships and porn - goes on a package tour of Thailand where he meets Valerie, a fellow, sexually free French girl. Both are sexually rapacious and predatory, so back in France they hook up, and together with her boss Jean Yves, they devise a scheme to develop a network of "sex Tourism" resorts to save their ailing travel company.

As the novel progresses Houllebecq charts Michel's growth, sexual responsiveness and "humanization" with a fierce awareness. This is an astute character study, where we witness a forty year old, lonely, and somewhat raffish individual being reborn and, in effect, being "humanized." Michel himself admits that his life with Valerie has radically changed him and that he is absolutely blessed and he feels fortunate at having been given a "second chance" at his age. The final part of this novel is absolutely shocking in its content, as Michel and Valerie suffer the effects of a devastating Islamic terrorist attack on their resort. In graphic detail the attack mirrors in many ways the recent Bali bombing, which is also kind of interesting.

This book isn't for everyone; some of the moralists may be put off by the startling and raw sexuality, but I think that the book is raising some serious questions about the way the West views sex, and also the way that sexuality has become a marketable, economic commodity. Bangkok 8 also raised these issues, but I think Platform does this much more successfully, because it goes further and postulates on a future where both women and men have given up on looking for romance and are so busy with their professional lives that they will increasingly seek to pay for sex in third world counties. Houllebecq proposes a grim bleak future as people from the moneyed; hard working, market driven and capitalist West will be unable to relate to one another sexually or in any other way, and will increasingly turn to populations from countries like Thailand in the search for physical and emotional intimacy. Sex is a product that can be exchanged for a price, and devoid of morality, it inevitably becomes just like other Western products.

I don't think Platform is particularly ant-Muslim, but I do think it is raising some series issues about the Islamic faith, and the religion's attitudes to matters of sexuality. This is not one of my favorite books of the year, yet it certainly deserves some attention, and Houllebecq should certainly be commended for tackling these issues with such honesty and candor. I will definitely look forward to reading more of his work.

Michael

Rating:
Summary: Sleeping Through The Naughty Bits
Review: Much like a stereotypical French film, this novel brims to overflowing with much sex, symbolism, and suspense. Sadly, none are handled very well.

The narrator - a racially-charged forty-year-old Frenchman with a penchant for sex and "Questions pour un Champion" (in that order, albeit just barely) - provides plenty of grim atmosphere to go around. The mysterious aspect of the narration comes when trivial details of other character's private lives come into play (Jean-Yves, the most thoroughly depressing yet only developed of the characters, is lengthily depicted living his life through the third person). Perhaps the characters, no matter how introverted, relate each pain-staking detail of their lives to the narrator for no discernible reason? Or perhaps the majority of their stories are fabrication on the part of the narrator?

But never mind. The important thing is the sex. If the narrator isn't receiving some form of geniticular pleasure at least every other page, then the rhythm of the story falls apart. Yet, it isn't a "Penthouse" variety of sex. The clinical terms come into play so frequently that the reader wonders whether he/she has picked up the latest version of a "How-to" manual: Pretentious Sex For Beginners.

In between sexual liasons, the reader is subjected to despondance-inducing economic/socio-political theory, endless details of tour cruise finances, and stilted views on the most popular race of people to bed.

Not a complete waste of time and money, this book is perhaps best left to the biggest fans of Houllebecq.

Rating:
Summary: Houellebecq is one of the best writers living today
Review: Platform is probably the best of Houellebecq's novels (the somewhat daft ending of 'Atomised' spoiled it for me). Houellebecq is one of the best writers living today. Next to his novels, most others just seem weak in comparison, beating around the bush, never really getting to grips with what we might call real life. Houllebecq tells it as it is; he does not mess about. He writes frankly about the things that really matter, the issues that really concern us, with acute and often brutal incisiveness. A common criticism of Houellebecq is that he digresses too much from the plot and frequently goes off on tangents, weaving philosophies and observations on life in general into the narrative. I would say that this is one of his greatest strengths. The beauty of novels is that this kind of digression is possible, whereas in a movie script, for example, it is not. It enriches the novel - it gives it depth. Anyone who has seen the film 'Whatever' as well as reading the book will know that as good as the film is, it could never have contained all the hilarious observations and incisive social commentary that the book does.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent nihilism
Review: The main character in Platform is a man in his early forties who has not made much of his life so far and who observes society from the sidelines. During a holiday in Thailand he meets the woman of his dreams, Valerie, who works in tourism. Inspired by her, he invents a whole new form of tourism, a type of legalized sex tourism, which becomes an enormous success. Until the end of the book, when everything goes wrong and it also becomes clear why the main character is keeping such a distance from the world.

Michel Houellebecq uses the theme of this book to further expand his rather bleak, mechanistic and nihilistic view of society in general and in this case tourism in particular. I can imagine that some people will absolutely hate this book and the views that Houellebecq has, but I really enjoyed reading it. And it contains little pearls of observations such as: "If it wasn't for sex, what would life be? A pointless fight against rheumatism and tooth decay." And in the end, that says it all...

Rating:
Summary: Existential Realism
Review: The novel's opening line obliquely evokes Camus's "The Stranger" ("Father died..."). Indeed, there are echoes of Camus all through. Yet the novel still feels fresh and original. It looks beyond the shopworn "realities" of French life that are celebrated by American writers (and in French novels and films as well).

Houellebecq's narrator, Michel, is a Parisian who is indifferent to the charms of the city ("Paris has never been a moveable feast for me"), and in fact, is more sensitized to the intimations of a new and frightening society that is roiling into existence in the city's environs.

He feels varying degrees of antipathy for almost everything, including people, money, art, social justice (pretty much everything about American and European culture), but perhaps most of all, Islam, which he enjoys hearing an Egyptian trash in one of the few "fuzzy" moments in the book.

What Michel does like is travel, alcohol to some extent (he doesn't seem to drink much but "Alcohol didn't let me down - never once in my life"), and sex as far as it goes.

There is a lot of sex in the book, and a lot of it is unconventional, yet Houellebecq's descriptions are understated and matter-of-fact. To his credit, he doesn't try to imbue the sex with more meaning than it has for his narrator, which appears to be little or none, beyond the obvious sensations and emotions that don't need to be explained or described.

Michel falls deeply in love with a woman, Valerie, who sees something in him and is secretly odd or different enough herself to be able to love a man like him. This love affair and the emotions involved are understated too, except for Michel's occasional expression of an appropriate incredulity about it.

The book has flaws. The stylistic device of delivering parts of the story in the form of impersonal reportage seems affected. Just the same, the themes developed in the reportage - tourism and the "corporatization" [my word] of modern life - emanate from the lives of fleshed-out characters and are germane to the larger themes of the book.



Rating:
Summary: toussaint l'overture i salute you
Review: The problem with the French is...they talk a lot and have nothing to say. So much wind. The snobbery against the blacks and the anglos is weird considering the racism and lack of true culture of the French. A very stupid book and typical of the FRenchies Of Gaul.

Rating:
Summary: atomized
Review: The thing about Houllebecq is that he has a polarizing affect on readers. One camp agrees with his views and forgives at times lazy writing. The other hates his views and trash the book. I happen to agree with many of his views, but not all, and find his fictional construct exciting, even if it has a few holes. Many people do not have time for a novel of ideas, especially a "profane" one, but if you feel like taking a cool, hard look at society, you have a friend in Houllebecq.