Read Online The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, Gavin Bowd - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michel Houellebecq, Gavin Bowd
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already to live a little.”
No one had laughed; neither during the screen test, nor at the comic film festival in Montbazon. And yet, and yet, I told myself, never had I reached such heights. Could Shakespeare himself have produced such dialogue? Could he have even imagined it, the sad fool?
Beyond the hackneyed subject of pedophilia, this film strove to be a vigorous plea against
friendship,
and more generally against all
nonsexual
relationships. What in fact could two men
talk about,
beyond a certain age? What reason could two men find for being together, except, of course, in the case of a conflict of interests, or of some common project (overthrowing a government, building a motorway, writing a script for a cartoon, exterminating the Jews)? After a certain age (I am talking about men of a certain level of intelligence, not aged brutes), it’s quite obvious that
everything has been said and done.
How could a project as intrinsically empty as two men
spending some time together
lead to anything other than boredom, annoyance, and, at the end of the day, outright hostility? While between a man and a woman there still remained, despite everything, something: a little bit of attraction, a little bit of hope, a little bit of a dream. Speech, which was basically designed for controversy and disagreement, was still scarred by its warlike origins. Speech destroys, separates, and when it is all that remains between a man and a woman, then you can consider the relationship over. When, however, it is accompanied, softened, and in some way sanctified by caresses, speech itself can take on a completely different meaning, one that is less dramatic but more profound, that of a detached intellectual counterpoint, free and uninvolved in immediate issues.
Launching an attack not only on friendship but on all social relationships as soon as they are unaccompanied by physical contact, this film thus constituted—only the magazine
Slut Zone
had the perspicacity to notice this—an indirect eulogy to bisexuality, if not hermaphroditism. All in all, I was harking back to the ancient Greeks. When you get old, you always hark back to the ancient Greeks.
Daniel24, 7
THE NUMBER OF HUMAN LIFE STORIES is 6174, which corresponds to Kapreker’s first constant. Whether they come from men or women, from Europe or Asia, America or Africa, whether they are complete or not, all agree on one point, and one point only: the unbearable nature of the mental suffering caused by old age.
It is no doubt Bruno1, with his brutal succinctness, who gives us its most striking image when he describes himself as “full of a young man’s desires, with the body of an old man”; but I repeat, all the testimonies concur, whether it is that of Daniel1, my distant predecessor, or of Rachid1, Paul1, John1, Felicity1, or that particularly poignant one of Esperanza1. At no moment in human history does growing old seem to have been a pleasure cruise; but, in the years preceding the disappearance of the species, it had manifestly become atrocious to the point where the level of voluntary deaths, prudishly renamed
departures
by the public-health bodies, was nearing 100 percent, and the average age of departure, estimated at sixty across the entire globe, was falling toward fifty in the most developed countries.
This figure was the result of a long evolution, scarcely begun at the time of Daniel1, when the average age at death was much higher, and suicide by old people was still infrequent. The now-ugly, deteriorated bodies of the elderly were, however, already the object of unanimous disgust, and it was undoubtedly the heat wave of summer 2003, which was particularly deadly in France, that provoked the first consciousness of the phenomenon. “The Death March of the Elderly” was the headline in
Libération
on the day after the first figures became known—more than ten thousand people, in the space of two weeks, had died in the country; some had died alone in
No one had laughed; neither during the screen test, nor at the comic film festival in Montbazon. And yet, and yet, I told myself, never had I reached such heights. Could Shakespeare himself have produced such dialogue? Could he have even imagined it, the sad fool?
Beyond the hackneyed subject of pedophilia, this film strove to be a vigorous plea against
friendship,
and more generally against all
nonsexual
relationships. What in fact could two men
talk about,
beyond a certain age? What reason could two men find for being together, except, of course, in the case of a conflict of interests, or of some common project (overthrowing a government, building a motorway, writing a script for a cartoon, exterminating the Jews)? After a certain age (I am talking about men of a certain level of intelligence, not aged brutes), it’s quite obvious that
everything has been said and done.
How could a project as intrinsically empty as two men
spending some time together
lead to anything other than boredom, annoyance, and, at the end of the day, outright hostility? While between a man and a woman there still remained, despite everything, something: a little bit of attraction, a little bit of hope, a little bit of a dream. Speech, which was basically designed for controversy and disagreement, was still scarred by its warlike origins. Speech destroys, separates, and when it is all that remains between a man and a woman, then you can consider the relationship over. When, however, it is accompanied, softened, and in some way sanctified by caresses, speech itself can take on a completely different meaning, one that is less dramatic but more profound, that of a detached intellectual counterpoint, free and uninvolved in immediate issues.
Launching an attack not only on friendship but on all social relationships as soon as they are unaccompanied by physical contact, this film thus constituted—only the magazine
Slut Zone
had the perspicacity to notice this—an indirect eulogy to bisexuality, if not hermaphroditism. All in all, I was harking back to the ancient Greeks. When you get old, you always hark back to the ancient Greeks.
Daniel24, 7
THE NUMBER OF HUMAN LIFE STORIES is 6174, which corresponds to Kapreker’s first constant. Whether they come from men or women, from Europe or Asia, America or Africa, whether they are complete or not, all agree on one point, and one point only: the unbearable nature of the mental suffering caused by old age.
It is no doubt Bruno1, with his brutal succinctness, who gives us its most striking image when he describes himself as “full of a young man’s desires, with the body of an old man”; but I repeat, all the testimonies concur, whether it is that of Daniel1, my distant predecessor, or of Rachid1, Paul1, John1, Felicity1, or that particularly poignant one of Esperanza1. At no moment in human history does growing old seem to have been a pleasure cruise; but, in the years preceding the disappearance of the species, it had manifestly become atrocious to the point where the level of voluntary deaths, prudishly renamed
departures
by the public-health bodies, was nearing 100 percent, and the average age of departure, estimated at sixty across the entire globe, was falling toward fifty in the most developed countries.
This figure was the result of a long evolution, scarcely begun at the time of Daniel1, when the average age at death was much higher, and suicide by old people was still infrequent. The now-ugly, deteriorated bodies of the elderly were, however, already the object of unanimous disgust, and it was undoubtedly the heat wave of summer 2003, which was particularly deadly in France, that provoked the first consciousness of the phenomenon. “The Death March of the Elderly” was the headline in
Libération
on the day after the first figures became known—more than ten thousand people, in the space of two weeks, had died in the country; some had died alone in
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