false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg 58372 25 Michel Houellebecq's book <I>Extension du domaine de la lutte</I>--translated with flagrant, profit-driven disregard for authorial intention as <I>Whatever</I>--was a smash hit in his native France and has already gained him a cult following here. It is a funny, sometimes bitter, modern existentialist fable. Whilst his next novel <I>Atomised</I> showcases greater sophistication and is certainly more complex and reaching, <I>Whatever</I> remains a brisker, more distilled affair. <p> Houellebecq's clarity of style is often remarked upon, and conveyings, in short chapters, in a fairly staccato book, his distaste for modern life. The narrator of the novel is young (just 30), well paid (computers!) and without a love life--not a geek, nor particularly a social inadequate, rather someone who just doesn't connect. He writes strange, allegorical animal stories; is a clumsy philosophical dilettante; and finds himself bored, overly self-aware and analytical, unable to settle and settle for his life. Then he is told to go on a extended work trip training provincial civil servants in the use of a new computer system accompanied by the extremely ugly Raphael Tisserand. Throughout the novel, the cheapening of sex and intimate relationships through commodification and modern communication technology is contemplated, but the interrogation remains relatively uncommitted; the attacks on psychoanalysis come thick and fast, seem more personal and often find their target. <p> Houellebecq does do a good job here of exemplifying the cul-de-sac that bored intelligence often finds itself languishing in. The trouble with this as a stratagem for a novel is that the reader is in danger of caring as little for the book as the characters do for their lives; this tightrope is better walked by writers such as Beckett or even Brett Easton Ellis and navigated more successfully by Houellebecq himself in his next novel. Indeed in many ways <I>Whatever</I> seems like a dress rehearsal for <I>Atomised</I> with similar characters imbued with the same concerns, the same post nouvelle-philosophes ennui running throughout. But it is a dress rehearsal worth attending: there is more than enough clever writing here, with its mordant articulation of a very particular kind of modern unhappiness, to consider it a success. 56842 1 10 1998 Whatever total:449|5:87|4:136|3:153|2:56|1:17| 449 1567 665 32 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 5 2 false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Wed Dec 12 11:14:20 -0800 2007 Wed Dec 12 11:46:43 -0800 2007 more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 4 1 false Tue Apr 29 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Apr 25 10:28:54 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 29 16:23:25 -0700 2008 more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 4 0 false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Jun 08 07:17:11 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 07:17:33 -0700 2009
Houellebecq beschrijf hier op meesterlijke wijze de leegte van het hoofdpersonage (een depressie...more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 2 0 false Mon Oct 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 03 00:40:07 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 12 10:13:05 -0700 2009
All protagonists have similar problems (loneliness, (a)sexuality, social awkwardness, money issues, psychological therapy and sedatives...)...more...]]> 106916 2290349526 9782290349526 65 6 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171567980m/106916.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106916.Extension_Du_Domaine_de_La_Lutte 5 0 false Mon Aug 17 09:53:37 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 09:54:33 -0700 2009
Aucune envie, plus de désir, quelques habitudes.

C'est tout un monde de désespoir et de non-sens qui s'ouvre en même temps que commence ce roman des perdan...more...]]> 106901 8433966901 9788433966902 20 2 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1213028938m/106901.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106901.Ampliaci_n_del_Campo_de_Batalla 3 0 false Wed Feb 25 12:11:19 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 18 11:13:47 -0700 2009 more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 3 0 false Sun Jun 08 00:15:58 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 04 00:02:42 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 08 00:15:58 -0700 2008
"Love as a kind of innocence and as a capacity for illusion, as an aptitude for epitomizing the whole of the other se...more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 2 1 false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 04 18:01:36 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 11 03:41:58 -0700 2009 more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 3 0 false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 11 05:56:51 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 11 05:59:53 -0800 2008 more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 2 0 false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 04 13:06:21 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 13:09:53 -0800 2009
Still, though, it was interestin...more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 3 0 false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 17 02:41:12 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 17 02:44:31 -0800 2009 more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 3 0 false Fri Jun 19 12:30:25 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 19 12:32:43 -0700 2009
TSR review here.]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 4 1 false Wed Feb 20 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 06 12:08:46 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 06 12:10:17 -0800 2009 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 5 0 false Mon May 11 10:12:05 -0700 2009 Mon May 11 10:13:39 -0700 2009 106916 2290349526 9782290349526 65 6 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171567980m/106916.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106916.Extension_Du_Domaine_de_La_Lutte 3 0 false Thu Nov 13 00:29:33 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 25 04:20:05 -0800 2008 106916 2290349526 9782290349526 65 6 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171567980m/106916.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106916.Extension_Du_Domaine_de_La_Lutte 5 0 false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Mar 21 18:06:41 -0700 2008 Fri Mar 21 18:12:25 -0700 2008 more...]]> 106901 8433966901 9788433966902 20 2 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1213028938m/106901.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106901.Ampliaci_n_del_Campo_de_Batalla 0 0 false Mon Apr 28 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 28 14:10:40 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 28 14:12:46 -0700 2008 more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 2 0 false Fri Oct 26 12:40:10 -0700 2007 Sat Apr 19 08:52:10 -0700 2008 more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 4 0 false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Dec 04 17:10:24 -0800 2007 Tue Dec 18 11:01:33 -0800 2007
Houellebecq would eventually up the ante on the sex and make the despair apparent much earlier in his b...more...]]> 58372 1852425849 9781852425845 266 24 3.49 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507666m/58372.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58372.Whatever 1 1 false Sun May 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue May 19 11:33:19 -0700 2009 Tue May 19 11:37:47 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=58372