Recommendations of the Editorial team
When Michel Houellebecq published his new novel “Annihilate” in 2022, the rumor spread that it could already be his last.
At least that’s what the acknowledgments in the book suggested. It said: “Fortunately, I have just come to a positive realization (…). It is time for me to stop.”
Fittingly, despite its gloomy title, “Annihilate” expands the French author’s enormous moral-philosophical corpus with thoroughly peaceful thoughts about love.
Michel Houellebecq in search of his (lost) childhood
Has Michel Houellebecq become milder with age? Not at all, as a large part of the novel’s socially critical foundation proves, which can be easily integrated into the French’s skeptical background noise. But traits of naivety, of a humanistic-romantic worldview, can also be found in Houellebecq. And that leads very directly to his admiration for Neil Young.
Michel Houellebecq and Neil Young? The author wrote an essay about the Canadian-born singer for the massive “Dictionnaire du rock”. It is also in German in the text collection “Interventions” (Dumont) appeared. Houellebecq has been involved in other arts in addition to writing for a long time, especially rock music. Just take the wonderful but also dark documentary “To Stay Alive: A Method”, which the writer, who seems more and more sunken every year, made with Iggy Pop and which is about art and depression.
Neil Young, Houellebecq suggests in his discussion, is essentially the antidote. Young writes songs “for the often unhappy and lonely, for those who slip just past the gates of despair; for those who still continue to believe that happiness is possible.”
No question, these could also be Houellebecq’s readers, whom he addresses so precisely here. But what’s most important to him is a vision that lies in the tireless musician’s songs: “‘Sugar Mountain’ and ‘I Am a Child’ have a purity, a naivety that makes your heart bleed. Such happiness is not possible, not here with us. That would have required preserving one’s childhood.”
Young’s songwriting is characterized by a completely fragile perfection; like Schubert, he is “perhaps even more shocking when he tries to describe happiness.” It is happiness, you can say that much if you have read even two or three stories by Houellebecq, the innocent child who has not yet been driven out of paradise.
More about Neil Young
The writing provocateur and cynic finds peace with the songs of a singing poet who, at least as Houellebecq sees it, was able to preserve his childhood as a great creative resource. Young’s unshakable work, striving in all directions – a utopia that is hard to grasp.