Table of Contents

1. Jacques Prévert is a jerk
  
2. The Mirage by Jean-Claude Guiguet

3. Approaches to distress

4. Staring into the distance: in praise of silent cinema

5. Interview with Jean-Yves Jouannais and Christophe Duchâtel

6. Art as peeling

7. Creative absurdity

8. The party

9. Time out

10. Opera bianca

11. Letter to Lakis Proguidis

12. The question of paedophilia

13. Humanity, the second stage
   
14. Empty heavens

15. I have a dream

16. Neil Young

17. Interview with Christian Authier

18. I don’t love myself

19. Sky, earth, sun

20. Leaving the twentieth century

21. Philippe Muray in 2002

22. Towards a semi-rehabilitation of the hick

23. Conservatism, a source of progress

24. Prolegomena to positivism

25. I’m normal. A normal writer

26. I have read my whole life long

27. Soil cutting

28. The lost text

29. Interview with Frédéric Beigbeder

30. A remedy for the exhaustion of being

31. Interview with Marin De Viry and Valérie Toranian

32. Interview with Agathe Novak-Lechevalier

33. Emmanuel Carrère and the problem of goodness

34. Donald Trump is a good president

35. Conversation with Geoffroy Lejeune

36. A bit worse. A response to a few friends

37. The Vincent Lambert affair should not have taken place

Sources

Notes

About the Author

Michel Houellebecq is a French writer, poet and essayist.  His many bestselling books include Platform, The Possibility of an Island, Submission and Serotonin.  He won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2010 and, in 2019, he was awarded the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest order of merit.

Reviews

"The most famous French novelist of his generation."
The New Yorker "An author who captures the times like no other."
Evening Standard

"Fascinating"
Euro News

"The author has a rare power: the ability to predict at least the general form of the future."
Foreign Policy

"these essays are a good place to get acquainted with that voice, acidic, pitiless, but too full of humor and awareness to shy from"
The Local Voice

"boasts an array of subjects of great depth and provocation."
Washington Examiner