Notes from the phone booth at the end of the world

I've never read any of his novels, and I wouldn't say that I agree with all of his views.

Still, Michel Houellebecq certainly interviews well. (Via A&L Daily)

On what seem to be the enormous challenges of French childhood reading:

And then there was Pif le chien, a comic book published by Editions Vaillant and sponsored by the Communist Party. I realize now when I reread it that there was a Communist bent to many of Pif’s adventures. For example, a prehistoric man would bring down the local sorcerer in single combat and explain to the tribe that they didn’t need a sorcerer and that there was no need to fear thunder. The series was very innovative and of exceptional quality. I read Baudelaire oddly early, when I was about thirteen, but Pascal was the shock of my life. I was fifteen. I was on a class trip to Germany, my first trip abroad, and strangely I had brought the Pensées of Pascal. I was terrified by this passage: “Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.” I think it affected me so deeply because I was raised by my grandparents. Suddenly I realized that they were going to die and probably soon. That’s when I discovered death.

Yes....and American parents are afraid of the damage that might be caused by Heather Has Two Mommies.

Anyway...

On visiting your neighbours:

The biggest consequence of The Elementary Particles, apart from the money and not having to work, is that I have become known internationally. I’ve stopped being a tourist, for example, because my book tours have satisfied any desire I might have to travel. And as a result there are countries I have visited that you wouldn’t ordinarily go to, like Germany.

INTERVIEWER

Why do you say that?

HOUELLEBECQ

Nobody does tourism in Germany. It doesn’t exist. But they’re wrong not to. It’s not so bad.

[Ahem: as pleased as I am with this glowing appraisal, it is apparent that some people -- well...at least from the Guardian -- do do tourism in Germany, and in our little corner of it, even.]

On inspiration:

INTERVIEWER

In your preface to The Possibility of an Island, you mentioned a journalist who inspired the idea for the novel. Can you explain?

HOUELLEBECQ

It was a pretty strange moment. I was in Berlin at a café on a lake, waiting to be interviewed. It was very quiet. It was ten o’clock in the morning. There was no one around. And this German journalist arrives and, it was very curious, she wasn’t behaving normally. She didn’t have a tape recorder and she wasn’t taking notes. And she said, “I had a dream that you were in a phone booth after the end of the world and you were speaking to all of humanity but without knowing whether anyone was listening.” It was like being in a zombie film.

I'm thinking of putting him on my to-read list, not least since he's written what sounds like an intriguing book about one of my favourite authors, H.P. Lovecraft.

Any views on the matter you might wish to share?

How not to start an article

Discovered, today, in The Guardian: the gratingly gauche opening of Will Self's article on Roald Dahl (on the occasion of the release of Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox):

A few months ago, I was coming out of the lavatory at Maison Bertaud, a fusty old patisserie in Soho, when I saw the familiar full-moon face of Simon Callow – actor, playwright, director, indeed all round homme de théâtre – eclipsing the window.

Need I say more? This sentence essentially killed the article for me. "A fusty old patisserie in Soho" my arse!

Of course, alarm bells should have started ringing when I read the article's subheading:

Roald Dahl's children's books are full of barely submerged misogyny, lust and violence.

Well, duh!, Will "Rip van Winkle" Self (or whatever 12-year old subeditor is responsible for this bracing display of le lieu commun). Where have you spent the last two and a half decades? Next thing you know we'll be encountering the path-breaking revelation that Alien is brimfull with Freudian undertones.

Now, who'd have guessed?

What is the French for 'road trip'?

So, we're back for a brief moment before heading off again....

Leeds was great fun, even if the weather was uncooperative. (On the other hand: what would a northern English town be without torrential downpours? Um...yes...far more pleasant. Never mind...) Thanks are due to the organisers of a consistently enlightening conference on cutting-edge crime history.

It's nice to return home, if only briefly, to find a house intact, several more tomatoes in the garden and my long-awaited gun licence.

However, we're off again tomorrow morning...

The way back was also interesting. We very much appreciate the efforts of the station manager at Manchester Piccadilly rail station (apparently known by a radio call sign something like 'Foxtrot Alpha Hotel Terrier' or something...at least that's what it sounded like) who helped to ensure that we got to Manchester Airport despite flooded train lines.

We also exchanged some interesting comments with him on the privatisation and fragmentation of transportation services in Britain. He was certainly a well-informed and opinionated man...who seemed to have a genuine sense of responsibility for the people in his station trying to get somewhere.

A rare characteristic these days.

We later encountered -- in some way -- both the best and worst of Brits abroad via the flight home. On the one hand, we were sat next to a 30ish woman coming over to Germany for some kind of DJ-related event who would not stop generating banal chatter about everything possible. Moreover, she demonstrated the heights of high-maintenance troublemaking by kicking off a minor fuss when the airline didn't have brown sugar. It was 'refined' she said, which made it All Kinds of Evil. At the same time -- for unexpressed reasons -- she was disappointed at the lack of 'real milk' to add to her coffee. Nonetheless: she had consumed about half a pack of Starburst fruit chews and scarfed the offered chocolate bar without a second thought about all the refined sugar and possibly questionable dairy products they might have contained.

She was, you might have guessed, rather an annoyance.

However, on the ground in Frankfurt and while waiting for our luggage, we encountered a delightful gentleman of a somewhat older generation (and rather working-class origins, as best I could tell) who raved to us eagerly about Berlin. 'A magical city' was the phrase he used, and he enthused about having walked down Unter den Linden as if it were the achievement of a lifelong dream. (Even if he had lost a pair of glasses on that trip.)

We spoke to him for all of five minutes, but his charm and normality were enough to (almost) wipe away the previous hour-and-a-half's torment at the hands of Rave Lady.

In academic terms, things went well, which means I made my point without having anything too sharp and pointy thrown at me. I learned a lot from what other people in my field had to say (and I have long thought that people in crime history are quite a good -- read sane, intelligent and creative-- bunch...this conference not giving me any reason to doubt that assessment) and I hope that they found what I had to say at least worth considering.

Tomorrow, it's off to France (as has been our practice in previous years, as also reported here). First to Normandy for a few days, then to Lyon (for another conference), Padern, Carcassone and then back to the Normandy coast for what will prove to be too short a while.

I'm bringing along a few books I've agreed to review in my field and some preliminary research for an upcoming project. Otherwise, I'll be delving into Richard Evans's The Coming of the Third Reich and H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories, giving me both a bit of real historical horror and some fantasy supernatural horror.

In our experience, internet cafes in provincial France are rather rare things. We will try to check in as much as possible, however, and might even post a few photos from what will be a rather long voyage de la route.

And, of course, we'll be thinking about you.

Well, some of you.

Uh....certainly a select few.

In any case: au revoir.

And keep those mooseburgers warm (note: four different links there...) until we return, you mavericks!

R.I.P. Björn Berg - not Borg

For bookworms of my generation, the death of Swedish artist Björn Berg is sad news, as many of us grew up with his artwork for Astrid Lindgren's Emil books (in German: Michel aus Lönneberga).

His illustrations were wonderful:



Image via.

Pity that publishers seem to be hell-bent on replacing the work of Lindgren's original illustrators - besides Berg the wonderful Ilon Wikland - with less congenial artists. Some of the English editions just look dire.