Submission
The Fatwa
I never really took Islam seriously until Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced his infamous fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. Until then, or at least since 1979 when the Iranian revolution came out of nowhere, I just assumed these “radical Muslims” were like some kind of rare disease. Surely with a little time they would die out, like hip hop and disco. Needless to say, I was wrong on all three counts.
It was the fatwa—and the intensity of subsequent religious zeal for all Muslims to carry out the murder of an extraordinary novelist—that made me realize this frickin’ Islam thing had been building for hundreds of years, even centuries. The seeming madness became an overnight sensation. It was as if a calm and verdant mountain top in the Middle East suddenly exploded into a volcano that we (average Westerners) had never even noticed was there.
My feelings about Muslim nations have been changing ever since, albeit in tiny increments. My inner voice had been on a somnambulant loop which—over and over—kept whispering: “I wish I never heard the name Iraq and Iran.” Throughout the 90’s, though, I experienced the occasional dread that, not just Rushdie, but we too, all students of history, had to contend with the fucking intolerance of massive bunch of pilgrimage-crazy lunatics. Okay, a little over the top there. But: a religion of all things–holy crap. And mostly I ignored the upshot–until, of course, September 11, 2001.
Seems like a cancer? Well, sure. The terrorist impulse has metastasized into all kinds of Koranic-based evils: Al Queda and ISIS and Boko Haram and Radical Salafism. Now in 2015 these “fidels” have made such a mess of things that we, the “infidels,” have to be reminded daily of their small-mindedness and their dangerous 7th century ideas. What was once a mere irritation has come to resemble a nightmare. Do you remember how you felt when you first heard of suicide bombers?
Caliphate. Polygamy. Slavery. Return of the Ottoman Empire. Okay, maybe not worse than the hegemony of the Catholic Church in the middle ages—which, I understand, is no mere coincidence—unless, that is, you disagree with me that being burned at the stake was at least as bad as having your noggin cut off.
It is only recently that we have heard from other Muslims, joining voices worldwide, saying that Islam is really a religion of peace. Well, if you know anything about the Koran they are both right and not quite right. Trying to contain the monster in their belly? Your guess is as good as mine.
So it is possible, most likely in fact, that another terrorist attack, or more of them, will occur and will happen “on American soil” and will be perpetrated by ISIS fanatics.
ON THE OTHER HAND
The same goes for those attacks perpetrated by home-grown white Americans.
I hate to say this but I have something in common with Donald Trump. We both “know some very good Muslims.” I actually work with a good many in IT. In Kip’s high school days I used to taxi around a bunch of African soccer players in my minivan, both Muslim and Christian. Good “folks” as President Obama likes to say. To judge by my acquaintances, Islam is just about as good or bad as any other religion. Sure, why not?
We mock Mr. Trump’s attempt to appeal to reason, do we not? It’s because we know it’s not reason. But all the man says is: “we’ve got to find out what’s going on”. Now Donald, we know exactly what’s going on. It has been shown that immediately after a terrorist attack, about 30% of Americans believe they are personally at risk. That perception is real—even if statistically ridiculous and stunningly unfounded. The fear contributes to political discussion. It then morphs quickly to public policy change. And of course, the real science of mass hysteria is ignored by all (recent research is reported here).
One could propose there is no logical reason we should collectively freak. (Actually I think Jeb Bush tried the calming approach recently and instantly dropped 3 notches in the polling.) But while the fear of a terrorist attack is real, the fear appears to be way out of proportion to the actual odds. What’s more, we humans are a calculating creature. So why can we not admit to the inevitability of it, and at the same time commit to a sound and reasonable approach?
After all, we don’t freak about getting into our own car—which is a far more dangerous threat to our existence. Could not this information not be a starting point?
Well, you see . . . there’s these pesky little things . . . we call . . . elections.
Michel Houellebecq “Submission” (2015)
According to the Guardian, Michel Houellebecq “is the first novelist since Albert Camus to find a wide readership outside France.” However, we must quickly add, he is often despised and denounced as well. His novels are comprised of biting satire. They are not written with artful prose. He has not really been embraced by the literary establishment, and part of the reason is that his narrators are considered vile, porno-loving, self-hating misanthropic assholes. He himself is not crazy about Jews, Muslims, or for that matter, the French or Americans or Russians. For his own views regarding Islam (it is a “stupid religion” he once said), the right-wing have accepted him as one of their own—but he has never aligned himself with any group.
He kind of reminds me of Jonathan Swift, actually. But what Houellebecq himself reminds us is that terrorism is not the point. What he offers up in this new novel is the following scenario: Muslims, it turns out, have as their goal the domination of Europe—indeed, eventually, the world—but they must achieve this not by violence but by way of elections. For his toils, Houellebecq has been roundly criticized as a right-wing racist. Actually I don’t see that myself.
OK, so maybe no one but me wants to know about this dude and his cultural pie-in-the-face style. I get that, but I have an announcement to make. To wit: brilliant!—both as writing, as entertainment, and as satire. And now, for having admitted that, I am bound to be put on everybody’s shit-list.
Still, for the satire-lovers out there, the book is 246 pages and can reasonably be devoured in a day or two. The amount of time spent depends on how much you enjoy ruminating.
The year is 2022. The extreme Right, aka the National Front headed by none other than Marine Le Pen, had done well in 2017 but now, five years later, the National Front has been growing in popularity and fearfully expected to win big in the current elections. The “center-Right” (think Wall-Street Republicans) is falling flat on its face. The socialists are holding a tattered bag of out-dated ideas and tired-solutions for dealing with societal problems. The Muslims formed their own party in 2017, and have since been biding their time, often voting with the socialists . . . until . . . ah ha! . . . until they found themselves in 2022 with enough votes, via population alone, to put up a clever candidate for office.
Our narrator is Francois, who lives alone, and prefers it that way. In some ways he is a typical Houellebecq character but in this case he is also a Huysmans scholar and professor at an esteemed French university in Paris. He has a powerful personality, and is interesting to talk to, and to listen to, especially when he is not chasing young women. Like so many other academics I have met over the years, he is neither particularly passionate nor especially hostile to his profession—but “rather jaded” as we used to say. Oh yes, and the exact opposite of politically correct.
Yet he is never a bore. He is clever and cynical and thoughtful all at the same time. About women he is terribly old-fashioned and cannot form a monogamous relationship. Most of his girl friends have been just that—girls, students at the university. I suspect that modern American women can’t stand to read this book. And yet some of Houellebecq’s sharpest and most damning barbs are reserved for Francois himself, who indulges mindlessly gratuitous sexual whims and who sees himself as a kind of white French Everyman lost in the atrophying culture of our era.
Most of the “action” takes place in his thoughts and reminiscences, and discussions with friends about the current state of affairs. The themes of the book are many, and are woven into a seemingly loose narrative of intellectual and thoughtful meanderings—but ideas that gradually, very gradually, become taut with reality of events.
[ In 2017 ] the foreign press looked on, bewildered, as a leftist president was reelected in a country that was more and more openly right-wing: the spectacle was shameful but mathematically inevitable. Over the next few weeks a strange, oppressive mood settled over France, a kind of suffocating despair, all-encompassing but shot through with glints of insurrections. People even chose to leave the country. Then, a month after the elections, Mohammed Ben Abbes announced the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Some of the protests and events we see unfold on television, either in news casts or debates representing contemporary politics and the absurdity of their philosophies. Some of the events swirl in ambiguity. We witness or hear about them first-hand—but curiously—such as gunfire in the distance at an outdoor soiree:
"You're what?" I asked, "Catholic? Fascist? Both?" It just popped out. I was out of practice with intellectuals of the right—I couldn't remember how to behave. All at once, in the distance, we heard a kind of sustained crackling. "What was that, do you think?" asked Alice. "It sounded like shooting," she added hesitantly. We fell silent, and I realized that everyone in the garden had fallen silent, too. Again I noticed the rustle of wind in the leaves, and discreet footfalls on the gravel. . . . They had turned on their smartphones . . . "It's nothing," one of them whispered anxiously.
As time goes by, Muslim culture and beliefs begin invading the lecture halls and campus life. The Muslims express a desire for private funding of schools, and touting their own religious educational goals—basically limiting women’s access to higher education and public life.
The question is always, what really IS changing? His FRIENDS at the university don’t seem to think any of this will affect them, but he is suspicious. Francois, himself no believer in anything, discovers the crude politics from a colleague’s husband who has worked a lifetime for the French secret police:
"You think the Socialists will give in?" "They haven't much choice. If they don't reach an agreement, they don't stand a chance against the National Front . . . . Their only chance is to adopt a two track education system. They'll probably model it on the polygamy agreement which will maintain civil marriage . . . but will also recognize Muslim marriage. . . . Public education would still be available to everyone, though with drastically reduced funding. . . . we'd have a parallel system of Muslim charter schools . . . with private funding."
In the midst of all this angst, Le Pen’s party does indeed take the election in a stunning but not unexpected victory. Yet in a Parliamentary government the win becomes a mixed result. With the Muslim Brotherhood coming in second, and the Socialists not far behind, there are rumors of a detente between the parties. In the run-offs and after the elections, the socialist left quickly forms a devil’s pact with the Muslim Brotherhood to limit the damage from the Right.
Francois is eager to make friends with another professor, Lempereur, who is kind of a closet nativist. (I’m not sure the word “nativist” is yet common-speak here in the USA, but it most certainly is on The Continent, and no doubt we will hear the term more and more). Lempereur has given a lot of thought to the issues of this moment in history.
Myriam, Francois’ girl friend of the moment, reveals that her parents are leaving for Israel. Francois, not a Jew, counts Israel as not an option. In the ensuing chaos huge crowds erupt in violence on the streets of Paris. In the aftermath, the University is closed to avoid protests. Francois asks Lempereur what someone in his situation should consider doing. His nativist friend recommends two things: moving his money to HBSC Bank of England, and updating his visa.
With the university closed for months and no other options open to him, Francois takes a trip to the southwest of France which he considers moderately safe. He hopes for a getaway from all the political fallout, but around him more signs of violence crop up. He stops for gas and finds the attendant shot dead. Not long after that he takes up at a quaint tourist hotel in the little town of Martel (named after the seventh-century Charles Martel, victor over the Gauls and the Saxon tribes, claiming France for the Franks) . There he encounters another friend of his, Alain Tanneur, another acquaintance from police, who provides further clues to the as-yet unrevealed Muslim strategy.
It took us years to understand that, for all Ben Abbes' ambitions . . . his plans had nothing to do with Islamic fundamentalism. . . . For these Muslims, the real enemy isn't Catholicism. It's secularism. It's atheist materialism.
Francois decides to visit Rocamadour, the medieval citadel where Huysmans himself went to meditate at the Chapel of Our Lady. Francois finds a curious inner peace there, and he is really taken in by it, almost daily, but eventually finds that peace-of-mind and spirit are harder to come by just sitting alone in an otherwise dark church building.
Months later, Francois returns to Paris. He has not kept up with events. The entrance to his own former school has a gilded star and crescent above the doors. All the great universities have been privatized. Women must wear veils.
Even worse, he has been disqualified from teaching but given a decent pension. Myriam writes that she has found a new life and new friends in Israel. His mother and father, separated for years, end up dying within weeks of each other. Francois must make an effort to visit his father’s lawyer and mourning wife. Gradually it dawns on him that his own life work is done. He is getting old, can no longer sustain an erection, is suffering from a fungus infection, and he realizes that everything in life is becoming difficult. He considers the question: is it worth going on?
Some critics have found the story at this point patently absurd, at least in the sense of political events. But in defense of the author, the entirety of modern life in Europe is seen by some (cf. those writers at Charlie Hebdo) to have become just as absurd. In the novel, the Saudis have become patrons of the newly privatized universities, and this is one of the reasons the French don’t seem to mind, terribly—laid off workers get pensions for life, women get pensions for working at home—and due to the layoffs there are suddenly lots of jobs, and due to the petrol money there is lots of work to fund. Mohammed Ben Abbes manages to lower the crime rate drastically. He takes the country in a new direction. As time goes on, various other countries are now preparing to join the EU: Turkey, Lebanon, Syria.
Satire? Definitely. Absurd? Maybe. Europeans have a long memory, though. It has been said many times that on May 28 of the year 1459, Constantinople was still Christian Orthodox. The very next day it was Ottoman (following a 7-week siege).
In “Submission”, there are several more dialogues and theoretical discussions. Many of the former professors retain their jobs for the mere act of converting to Islam. Some eminent luminaries are brought back to the university at very large salaries, on the same condition. And so too eventually is Francois approached with an offer he seemingly can’t refuse: to work at the Islamic University of Paris-Sorbonne and become the editor of the upcoming Huysmans volumes for the Editions de Pleiade (the French version of the Library of America). The offer is made by the literary ladder-climber Roger Rediger, who by virtue of his having converted earlier than anyone, is now in charge of the department.
They meet, Francois and Rediger, at the latter’s mansion. Together they share a bottle of Meursault wine—gotta love it—and in a long evening wherein Rediger primes his subject with a masterful if somewhat tainted history of France and an well-practiced apologia of the solutions offered by Islam. Francois, intrigued, even receives from him a little 128-page paperback, “Ten Questions on Islam”.
But even before Francois could think of accepting, the flame of enthusiasm has him imagining the task ahead—even writing the preface.
Later in the day I went out and bought five packs of cigarettes. I found the menu from that Lebanese caterer, and two weeks later my preface was done. A low pressure system had entered France from the Azores, there was something balmy and springlike in the air, a kind of suspicious sweetness. Only a year ago, under the same meteorological conditions, you'd have seen the arrival of the first short skirts. I walked down the avenue de Choisy, then the avenue de Gobelins, and turned on the rue Monge. In a cafe near the Institute of the Arab World, I reread the forty pages I had written. Some of the punctuation needed correcting, a few of the references still had to be filled in, but even so, there was no doubt about it: it was the best thing I had ever written, the best thing on Huysmans, period.
I made my way home slowly on foot, like a little old man, more aware with every step that this time my intellectual life really was over; and that so was my long, very long relationship with Joris-Karl Huysmans.
I now take a step back. I won’t play spoiler and will not expose any more of the final chapters and/or narrative, which I find dramatic and touching.
But do know this: the book is not called “Submission” for nothing.
EPILOGUE
If one could think of a novel as fashion, there are many different fabrics of French culture sewn into this strange garment. Food and wine, and the enjoyment thereof, mark many passages and have the effect of humanizing the characters, no matter what side they are on. Sex is abundant and at the same time sorrowful. Can an aging Frenchman really expect to remain a youth on the prowl?
Also left out of MY (admittedly inadequate) summary is J.K. Huysmans himself, who appears in the book many times. The fin de siècle “French Decadent” known in America primarily for “La Bas” and “A Rebours”, it turns out, had also chronicled not only his solitary life of an aesthete, but his later conversion to Catholicism as well, through his subsequent works. In “Submission”, Francois is absorbed as much by Huysmans’ life and Catholicism as he is to the parallels in our contemporary world. Huysmans’ hatred and aversion to society as it was then, and how it changed over time—well, this is where the two stories, both Francois and Huysmans, neatly parallel in this book and provide much of the pleasure of reading it, assuming some familiarity with the source material.
But there remains, among many (not all) American critics, a cloying irritation with the books of Houellebecq. He attracts a large audience in France, but he offends deeply and refuses to stand in any one political corner. Even the sympathetic American critics seem to feel the need to point out all his faults: “dystopian” “distasteful” “offensive” “gratuitous” “scurrilous” “incorrect attitudes toward women”—and some passages I prefer not to discuss here—but to me, Houellebecq is mining a character type that he finds universal, digging deep into the male psyche, and doing so without a filter—excepting that his male characters seem wary and tired of it all too. In this author’s take on modern life, there is a considerable amount of ennui.
I’m pretty sure if Houellebecq were a movie director or a comedian, a lot of the criticism would not find root. I have found this book at least as interesting as a Quentin Tarantino or Woody Allen movie. It has some of the same ugly and vulgar qualities that make the recent Russian movie “Leviathan” so irritatingly appealing and at other times appalling. Which is to say what? That most people prefer do without all the ugliness in life? OK, but maybe certain novels are still held to a standard that is old fashioned and outmoded for reasons other than art.
A further problem for critics and readers is that Houellebecq does such a good job at this type of character, there is no way you can tell what Houellebecq himself really thinks. The main character, in my opinion, indeed all the characters here, are fully fleshed-out in ways that other speechifying works don’t ordinarily do. Houellebecq manages a discursive narrative from which personalities and emotions, both beguiling and deceiving, do emerge believably and humorously.
Ambiguity abounds also—always the thorn in the side of clarity. Few critics believe that Houellebecq himself is now sympathetic to the Muslim side; but he remains as prickly and irritating and coy as ever. I rather think he’s a handful.
Read the Paris Review Interview
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