Whatever

by Michel Houellebecq

The world is becoming more uniform before our eyes; telecommunications are improving; apartment interiors are enriched with new gadgets. Human relationships become progressively impossible, which greatly reduces the quantity of anecdote that goes to make up a life. And little by little death’s countenance appears in all its glory. The third millennium augurs well.

At least, I said to myself on learning of his death, he’ll have battled to the end. The Under-25s club, the winter sports vacations … At least he won’t have abdicated, won’t have thrown in the towel. Right to the end, and despite repeated failure, he’ll have looked for love. Squashed flat in the bodywork of his 205 GTI on the almost deserted highway, all bloody in his black suit and gold tie, I know that in his heart there was still the struggle, the desire and the will to struggle.

Everything which might have been a source of pleasure, of participation, of innocent sensual harmony, has become a source of suffering and unhappiness. At the same time I feel, and with impressive violence, the possibility of joy. For years I have been walking alongside a phantom who looks like me, and who lives in a theoretical paradise strictly related to the world. I’ve long believed that it was up to me to become one with this phantom. That’s done with. I