Fascinating 'Platform' provokes thought
"Platform," by Michel Houellebecq, translated from the French by Frank Wynne; Knopf. 259 Pages. $25
By Adam Joyce
Associated Press
Just when you thought it was safe to delve into the literature of "old Europe," a translation of French writer Michel Houellebecq's novel "Platform" hits U.S. shores.
This sexually explicit meditation on 21st-century alienation, capitalism and Orientalism is sure to offend some readers — and perhaps all readers at one time or another. But with a mix of philosophy and humor, "Platform" is a fascinating challenge to the underpinnings of civil society.
The book isn't as ambitious as Houellebecq's brilliant 2000 novel "The Elementary Particles," a sweeping cultural and scientific history of the 20th century that examines the disintegration of human relationships through everything from free love to genetic engineering. But "Platform" is a more emotional novel, and if Houellebecq enjoys a prolific career, it may someday be regarded as an important advance.
"Platform" opens as Michel, a government bureaucrat, inherits money through the recent murder of his father. Though 40, Michel seems to have no past or future. He shows little interest in relationships, sexual or otherwise, aside from taking in peep shows after work. "Why had I never shown any real passion in my life in general?" he asks.
In search of this passion, Michel uses his newfound wealth to tour Thailand. But little changes: He is contemptuous of other tourists and hires prostitutes to pass the time.
It's not only the death of Michel's father that should remind readers of Albert Camus' "The Stranger." There are also the staccato, deadpan sentences, the trancelike description of his life, and the cutting irony of his silent scream as he ambles from hotel to prostitute to tour bus.
Michel later explains to a fellow tourist that Western men choose to sleep with Third World women because both parties really want only to marry and settle down. Western women, he says, are after much more — great conversation, adventure — and their independence leaves both sexes longing for what they can't have. For men, the answer is sex tourism.
Back in Paris, Michel finds the passion he's been lacking. He falls into a torrid affair with Valerie — a high-powered executive with the company that packaged the tour — and he begins to re-engage with the world.
Valerie helps Michel discover that people are indeed capable of giving themselves to each other. "It's very rare now to find a woman who feels pleasure and wants to give it," he laments to her.
This is a familiar theme in Houellebecq's work. The Western emphasis on individualism, touted as our most important value, pits human beings against one another and destroys the possibility of genuine love.
"It's impossible to make love without a certain abandon," Michel says, "without accepting, at least temporarily, the state of being in a state of dependency, of weakness."
While one might expect Houellebecq to see hope in a 1950s-style morality, it's Valerie's career — not Michel's — that is central in their lives.
Although saddened by the capitalist ethic of constant innovation, Michel pitches to Valerie a key idea for her company: sexual fulfillment. While consumers say they want tours focusing on natural settings and environmental consciousness, Michel suggests, they truly want something else.
Michel argues that sex tourism is "an ideal trading opportunity," and many readers will part company with "Platform" here. Not only do slavery and exploitation of women seem glossed over, but Michel romanticizes residents of exotic locales as possessing "unspoiled sexuality." This arguably reduces these people to little more than savages.
Houellebecq aims to be provocative, and his work deserves to be considered and debated. But this passage shows a character unable to break out of a mindset that judges everyone through a Western lens. It seems at odds with his project of trying to subvert conventional thinking.
Michel's idea is a huge success, and he and Valerie take the tour to a spot in Thailand that has been experiencing terrorist attacks on foreigners. Valerie even decides she'll abandon her career to settle on a remote island with Michel.
But nothing is easy in Houellebecq's work, and Michel's new world comes crashing down in a shocking twist to an already outrageous story.
It's not a sunny outlook. But as Houellebecq pushes our buttons, he makes us question principles that define our very existence. We can reaffirm them or rethink them, but he demands we not take them for granted.
