The Elementary Particles

by Michel Houellebecq

They would swim naked in the creeks. Bruno always refused to take off his trunks; he felt small, pale, fat and repulsive. Sometimes his mother would take one of the boys to her bed. She was forty-five years old and her vulva was scrawny and sagged slightly, but she was still a very beautiful woman. Bruno jerked off at least three times a day. Here he was surrounded by the vulvas of young women, sometimes less than a meter away, but Bruno understood that they were closed to him: other boys were bigger, stronger, more tanned. Much later, Bruno would come to realize that the petit-bourgeois world of employees and middle managers was more accepting, more tolerant, than the alternative scene—represented at that time by hippies. “If I dress up as a middle manager, they’ll accept me as one,” Bruno liked to say. “All I need is a suit, a shirt and tie—all for eight hundred francs on sale at C&A. In fact, all I really have to do is learn to tie a necktie. Not having a car is a bit of a problem—the only real problem middle managers face in life. But it can be done: take out a loan, work for a couple of years to pay it off and there you go. But there’s no point in trying to pass myself off as a dropout. I’m not young or good-looking enough and I’m certainly not cool enough. My hair’s falling out, I’m getting fat. Worse than that, the older I get, the more terrified I am of rejection. I’m just not natural enough, not enough of an animal. It’s a permanent handicap because no matter what...

The first equation in any proof was the most poignant, because the truth fluttering in the distance was still precarious; the last was the most thrilling, the most joyful.

He felt as though he might explode, showering the campsite in a rain of fatty tissues.

“sexual revolution” was sometimes portrayed as a communal utopia, whereas in fact it was simply another stage in the historical rise of individualism. As the lovely word “household” suggests, the couple and the family would be the last bastion of primitive communism in liberal society. The sexual revolution was to destroy these intermediary communities, the last to separate the individual from the market. The destruction continues to this day.

He felt as though what was between his legs was a piece of oozing, putrefying meat devoured by worms.

When it is necessary to modify or renew fundamental doctrine, the generations sacrificed to the era during which the transformation takes place remain essentially alienated from that transformation, and often become directly hostile to it.

“The metaphysical mutation that gave rise to materialism and modern science in turn spawned two great trends: rationalism and individualism. Huxley’s mistake was in having poorly evaluated the balance of power between these two. Specifically, he underestimated the growth of individualism brought about by an increased consciousness of death. Individualism gives rise to freedom, the sense of self, the need to distinguish oneself and to be superior to others. A rational society like the one he describes in Brave New World can defuse the struggle. Economic rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over space—has no more reason to exist in a society of plenty, where the economy is strictly regulated. Sexual rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over time through reproduction—has no more reason to exist in a society where the connection between sex and procreation has been broken. But Huxley forgets about individualism. He doesn’t understand that sex, even stripped of its link with reproduction, still exists—not as a pleasure principle, but as a form of narcissistic differentiation. The same is true of the desire for wealth. Why has the Swedish model of social democracy never triumphed over liberalism? Why has it never been applied to sexual satisfaction? Because the metaphysical mutation brought about by modern science leads to individuation, vanity, malice and desire.

Be calm, my pain, and venture to be still. You clamored for the Night; it falls; is here: The city shrouds itself in blackest chill, Brings peace to some, to others fear.

respected fin-de-siècle intellectuals, Gilles Deleuze and Guy Debord, both committed suicide for no reason other than that they could not bear the idea of their own physical decline.

nothing in its history has been as important as the need for rational certainty. The West has sacrificed everything to this need: religion, happiness, hope—and, finally, its own life. You have to remember that when passing judgment on Western civilization.”

‘We must say summarily: This is made by figure and motion, for it is true. But to say what these are, and to compose the machine, is ridiculous. For it is useless, uncertain, and painful.’