Michel Houellebecq — arguably the most important French writer of the past quarter-century — was perched on the seat of his chair like a bird. We were sitting in his dim Paris apartment in August, a spectacularly beautiful day visible through his curtained windows, to discuss his new novel, “Annihilation,” which appears this week and returns to the themes of male loneliness and civilizational decline that have made his reputation. During our time together, Houellebecq, who is 68, would slump deeper and deeper in his chair, to the point where it seemed he would need help rising, only to pop back up, with unexpected agility, to balance once again on the balls of his feet. I had been trying to ask him about his life, but he was deftly deflecting personal questions — he had been answering them for decades and seemed done with that dance — until I asked him to tell me a little bit about his early life as a reader.
“I have moved too many times in my life,” he said in his weak, reedy voice. “But I kept one of my favorites.”
Houellebecq rose and searched a bookshelf near at hand, retrieving a small, well-worn book. It was “Les Contes d’Andersen,” a French translation of the Danish fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, No. 28 in “Lectures et Loisirs,” a series of books for children. This particular copy was published in 1960, four years after Houellebecq was born. On its cover, a little mermaid sat on a pink shell, weeping. An oyster, its pearl gleaming, lay open at her feet, and a blue fish with a pink tail and lush eyelashes looked at the mermaid with worry. » | Wyatt Mason | Wyatt Mason is a contributing writer for the magazine who has written about Cormac McCarthy’s tough-guy persona, Sigrid Nunez’s art of observing and the poet Shane McCrae’s rupture from his father. | Tuesday, October 8, 2024
