Appalachia and beyond: Conversations with Writers from the Mountain South Book

(Full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

For Americans who don't know -- there's this French dude named Michel Houellebecq who a lot of Europeans are super pissed at. And that's because he's a writer, see, a brilliant one, who also happens to be a misanthrope, and who sincerely despises just about 98 percent of all humanity, and takes great care to detail all the ways they deserve his hatred in his provocative novels, which have all been big hits in Europe but virtually unknown here, unsurprisingly enough. And this includes 2001's sex-tourism farce Platform, which has just some incredibly unkind things to say about Muslims (as well as Jews, Christians, atheists, women, men, the old, the young, and anyone else who breathes oxygen); so much so that a group of Muslims decided to take him to court in Europe for attempting to incite racially-based violence. And the lawsuit became a continental sensation, not the least of which was because of Houellebecq being in court each day and affecting the exact haughty, bored, superior tone and look throughout the proceedings that got him into trouble in the first place; for refusing to apologize, for refusing to say "you must've misunderstood me," for acting like the entire lawsuit was beneath him to begin with, and proof of what a bunch of moronic meatsacks humanity actually is. And this of course turned him into an even bigger sensation in Europe than he already was, which of course was also routinely ignored by the press here in the US, so that to this day barely any Americans at all know who Houellebecq is or why so many people are angry at him.

Well, except McSweeney's, that is, the small press started by literary wunderkind Dave Eggers, which in the 1990s became the posterchild not only for American hipster intellectuals but also for the power of daily digitally-distributed original content, years before the term "blog" had even been invented. Their organization, which also includes the "anti-poser" lit-crit publication The Believer, has become well-known for introducing global authors to a grateful American audience; in fact, one could argue that they are almost single-handedly responsible for the US popularity of Haruki Murakami. So when Believer Books recently got a chance to reprint Houellebecq's very first full-length manuscript in English form for the first time, plus managed to convince horror icon Stephen King to write a new introduction, I have to imagine that they almost peed in their pants jumping at it; the result is the extended literary essay HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, originally written in 1988, a slim tone which much like Nicholson Baker's U & I is partly an analysis of a particular writer's oeuvre (in Baker's case, John Updike), partly a gushing love letter as to why they like these particular authors so much. And make no mistake; if you're already familiar with Houellebecq's fictional work, the essay will also suddenly make his own motivations and aims so much clearer, and make you understand his own work so much better too.

As a matter of fact...