I have a small confession to make: I have never read the books of Karl Ove Knausgaard.
I’d be embarrassed to admit this, save that Knausgaard makes a similar confession in his recent review of Michel Houellebecq’s controversial novel Submission. The piece, published in The New York Times Book Review, documents all the Houellebecq he’s failed to read.
Fortunately, we learn, Knausgaard takes it upon himself to remedy this, settling down with a cigarette to read a copy of the new Houellebecq, which has been mailed to him. He’s also unfamiliar with author J.K. Huysmans, whose writings form a thematic foundation for Submission. He reads Huysmans’ best-known novel while sipping at a cup of coffee on the sidelines of his daughter’s gymnastics practice.
Halfway through this navel-gazing review, becoming bored and irritated, I began to remember why I’d steered clear of Knausgaard. Yet, Knausgaard seems the perfect person to review Houellebecq’s Submission, a book, like his own My Struggle saga, that revolves around the details of a particular white man’s ennui. Houellebecq, like Knausgaard, has achieved international renown, despite many critics suggesting their actual writing is artless and awkward, by delving into the problem of the disaffected middle-aged man.
Several critics have drawn attention to a still more notable doppelgänger of Houellebecq: Jonathan Franzen, whose Purity was published in the U.S. just over a month before Submission, also to muffled accusations of misanthropy, misogyny and mediocrity. These international literary superstars, all white men of a similar age and literary status, seem to only solidify their prestige, even as questions are raised about their problematic themes and unexceptional prose technique.
Why is the literary establishment so determined to preserve the mythology behind these men, our great white male novelists?
In just one slim volume, Submission tells the story of the mid-life crisis of François, a Huysmans scholar at a Parisian university, set against the backdrop of a near-future in which an Islamic party rises to power during the 2022 elections. We catch glimpses of unrest -- explosions in Paris, a gas station left silent and empty save for three dead bodies -- but mostly are treated to extensive disquisitions on French politics, Islam, and how the meeting of these two might affect François.
François had been comfortable, if less than happy, for years, making a steady living as an instructor, eating Indian TV dinners, and having a long string of affairs with beautiful students starstruck by his intellectual success. With the Islamic party determined to control French education, he's offered a large pension to resign from the university decades early -- unless he's willing to convert to Islam. If he does, his potential superiors hint, there will be benefits. Arranged marriage to a small harem of desirable women? Yes, those sorts of benefits.
Meanwhile, the Islamic party in power offers huge subsidies to women if they leave the workforce, and so they do, en masse. Women give up wearing sexy clothes (voluntarily or not, Houellebecq doesn’t much care why) and polygamy becomes the de facto family structure. Though the polygamous marriages are arranged through the Islamic bureaucracy, there's no hint of pushback from the women involved.
Published on the same day as the terrorist attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and a Charlie Hebdo cover featuring a caricature of Houellebecq himself, Submission