The Elementary Particles

by Michel Houellebecq

All in all, nature deserved to be wiped out in a holocaust—and man’s mission on earth was probably to do just that.

Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction, which is why it is so difficult to give up hope.

In the midst of nature’s barbarity, human beings sometimes (rarely) succeed in creating small oases warmed by love. Small, exclusive, enclosed spaces governed only by love and shared subjectivity.

Human beings who have worked—worked hard—all their lives with no motive other than love and devotion, who have literally given their lives for others, out of love and devotion; human beings who have no sense of having made any sacrifice, who cannot imagine any way of life other than

giving their lives for others, out of love and devotion. In general, such human beings are generally women.

world that respects only the young eventually devours everyone. For

“Talking to morons like that is like pissing in a urinal full of cigarette butts, like shitting in a toilet full of Tampax: nothing gets flushed, and everything starts to stink.” Space separates one skin from another. Words cross the space, the space between one skin and another. Unheard, unanswered, the words hang in the air and begin to decay, to stink; that’s the way it is. Seen like this, words could separate, too.

handful of needle-dick dreamers stayed behind, spending their evenings in a tent gently strumming an out-of-tune guitar while their peers despised them.

Bruno was beginning to feel a little sleepy. He had stopped wishing, he had stopped wanting, he was nowhere. Slowly, by degrees, his spirit filled to a state of nothingness, the sheer joy that comes of not being part of the world.

The archaic or literal sense of the word trance is extreme anxiety, fear at the idea of imminent danger. I would rather leave my home than go on living through such a trance (Émile Zola).

A small man still seems to me to be a man, he wrote, whereas a small woman appears to me to belong to a new type of animal.

“It’s pretty bad,” she said. “Most guys prefer a blow-job,” she said. “They’re not really into fucking, they find it difficult to keep it up. But take some guy’s cock in your mouth and he’s like a little kid again. I think feminism has hit them harder than they like to admit.”

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.

Family relationships last for years, sometimes decades—much longer, in fact, than any other kind of relationship; then, finally, they too gutter out.

“Everyone says Brave New World is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment of society, but that’s hypocritical bullshit. Brave New World is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the war against aging, the leisure society. This is precisely the world that we have tried—and so far failed—to create. The only thing in the book that rankles a little with our idea of equal opportunities—or meritocracy—is the idea of dividing society into castes where each performs tasks according to their genetic makeup. But that’s also the only point on which Huxley proved a false prophet. Advances in automation and robotics have made the whole idea pointless.

A world of women would be immeasurably superior, tracing a slower but unwavering progression, with no U-turns and no chaotic insecurity, toward a general happiness.

When the girl started stroking my belly with her soapy tits, I had a revelation: the guy in the next cabin getting a quick “full body” was my father. He had aged terribly—he looked like a real retiree—but there was no doubt about it, it was him.

“I’m useless,” he said resignedly. “I couldn’t breed pigs, I don’t have the faintest idea how to make sausages or forks or mobile phones. I’m surrounded by all this stuff that I eat or use and I couldn’t actually make a single thing—couldn’t even begin to understand how they’re made. If industrial production ceased tomorrow, if all the engineers and the specialist technicians disappeared off the face of the earth, I couldn’t do anything to start things over again. In fact, outside the industrialized world, I couldn’t even survive; I wouldn’t know how to feed or clothe myself, or protect myself from the weather. My technical competence falls far short of Neanderthal man. I’m completely dependent on my society, but I play no useful role in it. The only thing I know how to do is write dubious commentaries on outdated cultural issues. I get paid for it, too, well paid—much more than the average wage. Most of the people I know are exactly the same. In fact, the only useful person I know is my brother.”

Napoleon. He admired this man who had rained fire and blood upon Europe and killed hundreds of thousands of people without even a fig leaf of ideology, faith or political conviction. Unlike Hitler, unlike Stalin, the only thing Napoleon believed in was himself. He had succeeded in establishing a radical separation between himself and the rest of the world, and considered others mere tools in the service of his imperious will.

‘Bah! One night in Paris will replace these men.’

the cliché that men don’t make love because they’re in love, but because they’re turned on. Everyone around me knew that and lived like that—I grew up in a liberated environment—but I never enjoyed the game for its own sake. In the end, even the sex started to disgust me; I couldn’t stand their triumphant little smiles when I took off my dress, or their idiot leers when they came and especially their boorishness once it was all over and done with. They were spineless, pathetic and pretentious. In the end, it was too painful to know they thought of me as just another piece of meat. I was a prime cut, I suppose, because I was physically perfect, and they were proud to take me out and show me off in a restaurant.

Michel said nothing; he wasn’t surprised. For many women, adolescence is exciting—they’re really interested in boys and sex. But gradually they lose interest; they’re not so keen to open their legs or to get on their knees and wiggle their ass. They’re looking for a tender relationship they never will find, for a passion they’re no longer capable of feeling. Thus they begin the difficult years.

Unhappiness isn’t at its most acute point until a realistic chance of happiness, sufficiently close, has been envisioned.

Contemporary consciousness is no longer equipped to deal with our mortality. Never in any other time, or any other civilization, have people thought so much or so constantly about aging. Each individual has a simple view of the future: a time will come when the sum of pleasures that life has left to offer is outweighed by the sum of pain (one can actually feel the meter ticking, and it ticks always in the same direction). This weighing up of pleasure and pain, which everyone is forced to make sooner or later, leads logically, at a certain age, to suicide.

Children suffer the world that adults create for them and try their best to adapt to it; in time, usually, they will replicate it.

The Socialists are in on it too. They hate sheep because sheep are conservative, whereas everyone knows wolves are left-wing—which is kind of strange, because wolves look like German shepherds and they’re clearly on the extreme right.

Men are always interested in finance and value for money, it’s one of their characteristic traits.

“We think she’s ready for death, having reached a sufficiently advanced level of spiritual awareness.” What the fuck did that mean? There was no point in getting into it. It was obvious the old guy wasn’t actually saying anything, just making noises with his mouth. Michel

Fucking hippies . . .” he said as he sat down again. “They’re still convinced that religion is some sort of individual experience based on meditation, spiritual exploration and all that. They don’t understand that, on the contrary, it’s a purely social activity about rites and rituals, ceremonies and rules. According to Auguste Comte, the sole purpose of religion is to bring humanity to a state of perfect unity.”

Of all worldly goods, youth is clearly the most precious, and today we don’t believe in anything but worldly goods.

is possible to know someone for years, decades even, learning little by little how to avoid personal questions and anything of real importance, but the hope remains that someday, in different circumstances, one could talk about such things, ask such questions. Though it may be indefinitely postponed, the idea of a more personal, human relationship never fades, quite simply because human relationships do not fit easily into narrow, fixed compartments. Human beings therefore think of relationships as potentially “deep and meaningful”—an idea that can persist for years, until a single brutal act (usually something like death) makes it plain that it’s too late, that the “deep, meaningful” relationship they had cherished will never exist, any more than any of the others had. In his fifteen years of professional experience,

“I’m joking. Truth is, I’m just not interested in sex anymore. Knowledge, on the other hand . . . There’s still a desire for knowledge. It’s a curious thing, the thirst for knowledge . . . very few people have it, you know, even among scientists.

‘The value of any religion depends on the quality of the moral system founded upon it.’

But I’ve come to believe that religions are basically an attempt to explain the world; and no attempt to explain the world can survive if it clashes with our need for rational certainty. Mathematical proofs and experimental methods are the highest expressions of human consciousness. I realize that the facts seem to contradict me. I know that Islam—by far the most stupid, false and obfuscating of all religions—currently seems to be gaining ground, but it’s a transitory and superficial phenomenon: in the long term, Islam is even more doomed than Christianity.”

“I’m an atheist, always have been, but I can understand why they’re Catholic here. There’s something very special about this country. Everything seems constantly trembling: the grass in the fields or the water on the lake, everything signals its presence. The light is soft, shifting, like a mutable substance. You’ll see. The sky itself is alive.”

“Uneducated man,” Djerzinski went on, “is terrified of the idea of space; he imagines it to be vast, dark and yawning. He imagines beings in the elementary form of spheres, isolated in space, curled up in space, crushed by the eternal presence of three dimensions. Terrified of the idea of space, human beings curl up; they feel cold, they feel afraid. At best, they move in space and greet one another sadly. And yet this space is within them, it is nothing but their mental creation.

“That which is there to be spoken and thought of must be.”

It has been surprising to note the meekness, resignation, perhaps even secret relief with which humans have consented to their own passing.