MANTUA — Damn y'all, been rougher than some goddamn rough ass sandpaper, this past one. Still antibio-ed, roided, and limping after a long weekend in the pen, so synapses are firing on less than all cylinders. But this one finds its groove, considering: how this early Houellebecq stacks up against later, less optimistic iterations; how Houellebecq's emphasis on touch is interesting in the context of his typically mechanical view of intimacy; and how, even in today's secular world, we still adhere to mono- vs. polytheistic outlooks. Also: how research adds so much to a novel's depth. And: how crazy old Dutch dude Wim Hof's breathing techniques could well be the answer to keeping me out of the hospital.
LINKS--
Wim Hof breaking down breathing and cold immersion on JRE
That rando 21st century literary canon I scoffed at and then scoured (that I was surprised to see Platform was on...)
Wim Hof breaking down breathing and cold immersion on JRE
That rando 21st century literary canon I scoffed at and then scoured (that I was surprised to see Platform was on...)
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REFERENCED QUOTES--
“Father died last year. I don’t subscribe to the theory that we only become truly adult when our parents die; we never become truly adult” (3).
Interesting Asian WWII history. “After they entered the war in 1941, the Japanese decided to build a railway connecting Singapore and Burma, with the long-term objective of invading India. This railway had to cross Malaysia and Thailand. Come to think of it, what were the Thais doing during the Second World War? Well, now you come to mention it, not a lot. They were ‘neutral,’ Sôn informed me diplomatically. In reality, René explained, they’d signed a military pact with the Japanese without actually declaring war on the Allies. That was the way of wisdom, a way that demonstrated, once again, the celebrated ‘subtlety of mind’ that had made it possible for the Thais to spend two centuries caught in a viselike grip between the colonial powers of France and England without actually surrendering to either, and to remain the only country in Southeast Asia never to have actually been colonized” (42).
Damn. “In October 1943, the railway was completed, but sixteen thousand POWs had died from a variety of causes, including lack of food, the hostile climate, and the innate viciousness of the Japanese” (43).
Solo boi. “I still didn’t feel like eating with the others. It is in our relations with other people that we gain a sense of ourselves; it’s that, pretty much, that makes relations with other people unbearable” (63).
Real shit. “Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks” (66).
Art musings. “Henrietta, the sculptor, in whom Agatha Christie tried to portray not only the agony of creation (the scene where she destroys the statue just after laboring to finish it because she senses that it is lacking something), but that suffering that is particular to being an artist, an inability to be truly happy or unhappy, to truly feel hatred, despair, ecstasy, or love—the sort of aesthetic filter that separates, mercilessly, the artist from the world. The author had put much of herself into her character, and her candor was evident. Unfortunately, this isolation causes the artist to experience her surroundings in only vague, ambiguous, and consequently less intense manner, making her a less interesting character” (70).
[From Agatha Christie’s The Hollow:] “This was despair—this utter outer darkness of coldness and loneliness. And the sin of despair, that priests talked of, was a cold sin, the sin of cutting oneself off from all warm and living human contacts” (71).
Classic Houellebecq sadboy line. “There are some things that one can do, others that seem too difficult. Gradually, everything becomes too difficult: that’s what life comes down to” (93).
“When I brought Valérie to orgasm, when I felt her body quiver under mine, I sometimes had the impression—fleeting but irresistible—of attaining a new level of consciousness, where every evil was abolished” (117).
Touch. “ ‘What scares me about it all,’ she said, ‘is that there’s no physical contact. Everyone wears gloves, uses equipment. Skin never touches skin, there’s never a kiss, or a caress. For me, it’s the very antithesis of sexuality’” (137).
“Our genitals exist as a source of permanent, accessible pleasure. The god who created all our unhappinesses, who made us short-lived, vain, and cruel, has also provided this form of meager compensation. If we couldn’t have sex from time to time, what would life be?” (152).
“Something is definitely happening that’s making westerners stop sleeping with each other. Maybe it’s something to do with narcissism, or individualism, the cult of success, it doesn’t matter. The fact is that from about the age of twenty-five or thirty, people find it very difficult to meet new sexual partners. Yet they still feel the need to do so, it’s a need that fades very slowly. So they end up spending the next thirty years, almost the entirety of their adult lives, suffering permanent withdrawal” (172).
“ ‘You have several hundred westerners who have everything they could want but no longer manage to obtain sexual satisfaction. They spend their lives looking without finding it, and they are completely miserable. On the other hand, you have several billion people who have nothing, who are starving, who die young, who live in conditions unfit for human habitation, and who have nothing left to sell except their bodies and their unspoiled sexuality” (173).
“Offering your body as an object of pleasure, giving pleasure unselfishly: that’s what westerners don’t know how to do anymore. They’ve completely lost the sense of giving” (174).
Monotheism. “ ‘The closer a religion comes to monotheism [...] the more cruel and inhuman it becomes; and of all religions, Islam imposes the most radical monotheism. From its beginnings, it has been characterized by an uninterrupted series of wars of invasion and massacres […]. Far from being an attempt at abstraction, as it is sometimes portrayed, the move toward monotheism is nothing more than a shift toward mindlessness. Note that Catholicism, a subtle religion, and one that I respect, that well knew what suited human nature, quickly moved away from the monotheism imposed by its initial doctrine. Through the dogma of the Trinity and the cult of the Virgin and the Saints, the recognition of the role played by the powers of darkness, the ingenious invention of the angels, little by little it reconstituted an authentic polytheism. It was only by doing so that it succeeded in covering the earth with numberless artistic splendors’” (180).
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Previous
<<1SP030: THE FEMICIDE MACHINE (2012) by Sergio González Rodríguez Gonzalez
Related
<<1SP028: Sean C. on THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES (2000) by Michel Houellebecq
<<1SP010: Zac J. on THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND (2005) by Michel Houellebecq
Sean Thor Conroe has written stories for X-R-A-Y and has another coming soon from Soft Cartel. He lives on twitter @stconroe and in Philadelphia, where he works on his health.
REFERENCED QUOTES--
“Father died last year. I don’t subscribe to the theory that we only become truly adult when our parents die; we never become truly adult” (3).
Interesting Asian WWII history. “After they entered the war in 1941, the Japanese decided to build a railway connecting Singapore and Burma, with the long-term objective of invading India. This railway had to cross Malaysia and Thailand. Come to think of it, what were the Thais doing during the Second World War? Well, now you come to mention it, not a lot. They were ‘neutral,’ Sôn informed me diplomatically. In reality, René explained, they’d signed a military pact with the Japanese without actually declaring war on the Allies. That was the way of wisdom, a way that demonstrated, once again, the celebrated ‘subtlety of mind’ that had made it possible for the Thais to spend two centuries caught in a viselike grip between the colonial powers of France and England without actually surrendering to either, and to remain the only country in Southeast Asia never to have actually been colonized” (42).
Damn. “In October 1943, the railway was completed, but sixteen thousand POWs had died from a variety of causes, including lack of food, the hostile climate, and the innate viciousness of the Japanese” (43).
Solo boi. “I still didn’t feel like eating with the others. It is in our relations with other people that we gain a sense of ourselves; it’s that, pretty much, that makes relations with other people unbearable” (63).
Real shit. “Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks” (66).
Art musings. “Henrietta, the sculptor, in whom Agatha Christie tried to portray not only the agony of creation (the scene where she destroys the statue just after laboring to finish it because she senses that it is lacking something), but that suffering that is particular to being an artist, an inability to be truly happy or unhappy, to truly feel hatred, despair, ecstasy, or love—the sort of aesthetic filter that separates, mercilessly, the artist from the world. The author had put much of herself into her character, and her candor was evident. Unfortunately, this isolation causes the artist to experience her surroundings in only vague, ambiguous, and consequently less intense manner, making her a less interesting character” (70).
[From Agatha Christie’s The Hollow:] “This was despair—this utter outer darkness of coldness and loneliness. And the sin of despair, that priests talked of, was a cold sin, the sin of cutting oneself off from all warm and living human contacts” (71).
Classic Houellebecq sadboy line. “There are some things that one can do, others that seem too difficult. Gradually, everything becomes too difficult: that’s what life comes down to” (93).
“When I brought Valérie to orgasm, when I felt her body quiver under mine, I sometimes had the impression—fleeting but irresistible—of attaining a new level of consciousness, where every evil was abolished” (117).
Touch. “ ‘What scares me about it all,’ she said, ‘is that there’s no physical contact. Everyone wears gloves, uses equipment. Skin never touches skin, there’s never a kiss, or a caress. For me, it’s the very antithesis of sexuality’” (137).
“Our genitals exist as a source of permanent, accessible pleasure. The god who created all our unhappinesses, who made us short-lived, vain, and cruel, has also provided this form of meager compensation. If we couldn’t have sex from time to time, what would life be?” (152).
“Something is definitely happening that’s making westerners stop sleeping with each other. Maybe it’s something to do with narcissism, or individualism, the cult of success, it doesn’t matter. The fact is that from about the age of twenty-five or thirty, people find it very difficult to meet new sexual partners. Yet they still feel the need to do so, it’s a need that fades very slowly. So they end up spending the next thirty years, almost the entirety of their adult lives, suffering permanent withdrawal” (172).
“ ‘You have several hundred westerners who have everything they could want but no longer manage to obtain sexual satisfaction. They spend their lives looking without finding it, and they are completely miserable. On the other hand, you have several billion people who have nothing, who are starving, who die young, who live in conditions unfit for human habitation, and who have nothing left to sell except their bodies and their unspoiled sexuality” (173).
“Offering your body as an object of pleasure, giving pleasure unselfishly: that’s what westerners don’t know how to do anymore. They’ve completely lost the sense of giving” (174).
Monotheism. “ ‘The closer a religion comes to monotheism [...] the more cruel and inhuman it becomes; and of all religions, Islam imposes the most radical monotheism. From its beginnings, it has been characterized by an uninterrupted series of wars of invasion and massacres […]. Far from being an attempt at abstraction, as it is sometimes portrayed, the move toward monotheism is nothing more than a shift toward mindlessness. Note that Catholicism, a subtle religion, and one that I respect, that well knew what suited human nature, quickly moved away from the monotheism imposed by its initial doctrine. Through the dogma of the Trinity and the cult of the Virgin and the Saints, the recognition of the role played by the powers of darkness, the ingenious invention of the angels, little by little it reconstituted an authentic polytheism. It was only by doing so that it succeeded in covering the earth with numberless artistic splendors’” (180).
#
Previous
<<1SP030: THE FEMICIDE MACHINE (2012) by Sergio González Rodríguez Gonzalez
Related
<<1SP028: Sean C. on THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES (2000) by Michel Houellebecq
<<1SP010: Zac J. on THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND (2005) by Michel Houellebecq
Sean Thor Conroe has written stories for X-R-A-Y and has another coming soon from Soft Cartel. He lives on twitter @stconroe and in Philadelphia, where he works on his health.
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