antagonist

Dear Bernard-Henri Lévy,

Between the two us, there is, as one says, a world of difference. Except for one thing, and it’s not the least of things: we are both rather despicable individuals.

As a specialist in failed actions and hypocritical media appearances, you’ve disgraced even the white shirts you wear. As an intimate of the powerful, since childhood wallowing in wealth, you are the embodiment of what in, somewhat trivial magazines like Marianne, is still called ‘armchair socialism’ and what the German publicists more subtly call Toskana-Fraktion. As a thinker without thought, but certainly not without relations, you are moreover the creator of the most laughable movie in the history of film.

Nihilist, reactionary, cynic, racist and a womenhater in disguise: it would be too much honour to count me as a member of the hardly  appetising family of rightwing anarchists; essentially I am nothing else but a plebian. As a vulgar author without style I have, thanks to an improbable mistake of a handful of confused literary critics. been able to gain fame, a couple of years ago. Fortunately, my weak provocations have become boring since then.

Together we symbolise perfectly the terrifying feebleness of French culture and intelligence which Time Magazine reported, sternly but fairly, not so long ago.

We have in no way contributed to the resurrection of the French electroscene. Our names are not on the roll of Ratatouille.

All preconditions for a debate are present.

Michelle Houellebecq

Brussels, 26 January, 2008

(From Ennemis publics Flammarion/Grasset 2008.)