Second-rate Nietzsche

It’s perhaps easiest to introduce Michel Houellebecq, the controversial French writer whose new novel The Map and the Territory recently won the prestigious Prix Goncourt, by offering a couple of representative quotations from his previous work. Here is one, taken from his first novel, Whatever: “I don’t like this world. I definitely don’t like it. The society in which I live disgusts me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke” (this coming...

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