The suicide of the WestAtomised, by Michel Houellebecq

In a studiously detached prose, this book describes the consumption bonfire consuming the bedrock of Atlantic civilization: the pointless 'replacement' activities of intelligent, educated people deprived of any reasonable purpose, sex devoid of anything but carnal pleasure, life devoid of dignity, as it can be casually terminated by a suicide or an abortion, the loss of moral code, religion, dichotomy of right vs. wrong replaced with pleasant vs. unpleasant.

Of the two half-brother heroes, it would be difficult to say which is more despicable or more pitiful. The failed poet, bobbing along the eddies of life toward that inexorable sinkhole, or the scientist, unable to form any human bond, destroying the life around him, finally Frankenstein-like creating a race of monsters.

Many compare Atomised with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (taking a hint from Houellebecq himself). There are interesting points here: the most obvious one is the difference between the anticipated collectivism of Huxley, and existing individualism described by Houellebecq. Huxley assumed that the breakdown of traditional family and unlimited promiscuity would lead to a sort of collectivism; what would be the point of private property if there is no family, no children one could really call his own? Houellebecq shows that the breakdown of traditional family and unlimited promiscuity lead to increased individualism, if by individualism one means a lonely aloofness.

(The Brave New World however is a book that is chillingly accurate in many other respects: The wheels must turn! A new sport is only allowed when it can be shown that it will require more and more expensive equipment than the existing sports.)

The difference between Atomised and BNW runs deeper. The latter is at its core an optimistic book. It is a warning and you don't warn those whom you consider incapable of changing their ways. The author of Atomised has no such belief. This book is not a warning, it is a statement of fact.

One thing the two books have in common, though, is that they can be both incorrectly described as science fiction. Atomised purports to be written in about 2050. What passes for plot deals with a significant scientific discovery.

The book opens with an interesting point about 'metaphysical changes': both Christianity and modern rational science have risen when the then mainstream school of thinking was at the height of its power – Roman empire or Scholastic church. It follows then that now, when the rational science is untouchable, we are due for another 'metaphysical change' and we turn the first page wondering what this would be and hoping we'll soon find out. When we turn the last but one page we know, and it is an anti-climax. The hero of the book invents a way of stabilizing human DNA so it does not degenerate during cell division, this in turns makes possible a creation of race of immortals – enhanced humans, happy and secure and ready to inherit the Earth as the effete humankind withers away.

(This is Brave New World backward: in BNW a human of our own time comes among the race of happy new men, in Atomised a happy new race of men comes among humans of our own time.)

The ending lends to two readings: one that is literal and one that consider the ending to be just more of assorted irony. With literal reading, it would be easy to dismiss the plot of the book altogether: even if the genetic information does not deteriorate during life, the 'new humans' are still mortal due to accidents or diseases. The cloning does not help, my clone has not my memories and experiences, for all practical purposes it is a different entity. It could be speculated that such society would be more afraid of death than our own, not less. If you can be immortal just by being careful, this does not make for a vibrant society, I would guess.

Besides, it is all just a dirty trick: the two metaphysical changes Houellebecq mentions – Christianity and rational science – did what they did with very little material evidence. That is what is so interesting about them. Why would anybody during the reign of the emperor Trajan think that the Roman empire will not last forever? Why would anybody think that its gods and goddesses are not perfectly adequate for whatever needs man may have? And again, why would anybody in fourteenth or fifteenth century France or Italy think that the Roman Church is not going to last forever? Why would they think that the Church philosophers won't be able to answer all questions eventually?

If the evangelists could turn water into wine wherever they preached the gospel to pagans, if Leonardo could show his masters an atomic bomb, then there would be nothing strange about the victory of their ideas. Yet this is the case for Houellebecq's world; his heroes have a tangible evidence of their preaching and the dilemma facing the mankind is not whether to adopt a new unproven theory but whether to adopt its own demise.

This is not my reading of the book. The book is not about the dilemma mentioned in the preceding paragraph. The book is about the suicide of the West and I think it is obvious that the story of the 'new humans' is intended to show us the depth of our fall. In this respect, the book may be a warning, after all.