Leonard, P

Modern & Contemporary France

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civil in matters such as inheritance anddivorce, where law is inseparable from lesmœurs and where, therefore, ‘le droitimpre`gne la vie’ (165). Particularlyinteresting are the chapters that followon the ways in which legality andillegality affect the careers of Chabert(the implications of whose reappearanceare only inadequately covered by the law)and the marquis d’Espard in L’Inter-diction, where, as the lawyer Popinotshows, the workings of the law fail tocoincide with justice. In succeedingchapters the emphasis is again on thedifficulties of combining legality andjustice, whether through the somewhatambivalent if valuable role of the juge depaix or through arguments for andagainst the death penalty: politics swayspunishments (or non-punishments) inUne te´ne´breuse affaire; Tascheron isexecuted in Le Cure´ de village but thearguably equally criminal Vautrinbecomes Chief of Police at the end ofSplendeurs et mise`res des courtisanes.Although Balzac is fascinated byexecutions, he shows that the implemen-tation of the death penalty can be botharbitrary and unable to repair injusticescommitted. After the chapter on Peytel—which again shows Balzac vainly fightingagainst the harshness and probableinjustice of capital punishment—a chap-ter on Le Lys dans la valle´e demonstrateshow not just the law but justice itself canbe problematic: in Le Lys, as in other textssuch as La Femme de trente ans whichinvoke ‘“le doigt de Dieu”’, justice,whether human or divine, seems asinequitable as it is inescapable: ‘Ainsi,non seulement Dieu n’assure pas la policedu monde, mais sa justice, quand elles’exerce, apparaıˆt cruelle, disproportion-ne´e, inhumaine’ (329). Since the idea ofjustice is, like the law in Chabert, neitherclear nor universal (338), Balzac emergesas a perceptive analyst both of legaltechnicalities and of their implicationsfor philosophy, politics and ethics.In the following sections Lichtle´ moveson to aspects of Balzac’s ideas of politicsand modern government as they developin relation, notably, to the English‘revolution’. Balzac’s ambivalent portrayalof Cromwell inCromwell, and his seemingendorsement of a constitutional monar-chy supported by a strong secondchamber, give the lie to any assumptionthat Balzac was just a reactionary: inpolitics and ethics, as inmatters of the law,Balzac is unfailingly reflective and critical.As FrancoiseMe´lonio notes in her preface:‘le roman est l’antidote a` l’he´ge´monie dudroit’ (13). A detailed analysis of LouisLambert as a (failed) mystic, and anexamination of the reception of Le Pe`reGoriot between 1912 and 1960, close thismeticulously researched, finely argued,beautifully produced book.OWEN HEATHCOTEUniversity of Bradfordq 2013 Owen Heathcotehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2013.841665Michel Houellebecq: Humanity and itsAftermathDOUGLAS MORREYLiverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2013212 pages, £70.00, ISBN: 978 1846318610Not many people would be prepared totake on the task of writing a book on116 Book ReviewsMichel Houellebecq, the author of novelsthat tend to be remembered for the manynotorious and salacious episodes thatpopulate their pages. Often treated aspromoting a boorishly unpalatable mis-ogyny, indulging a prurient fascinationfor the obscene, celebrating the ejacula-tory, reinforcing a pornographic imagin-ation that is aimed at arousing theheterosexual male reader, and reachingfor the familiar images of a casualIslamophobia, Houellebecq hasroundly—and frequently—been con-demned for providing succour to thosewho would happily sweep away the gainsmade in the name of sexual equality andsocial justice. Douglas Morrey is pre-pared to take on the task of reading and,more importantly, re-reading thesedimensions of Houellebecq’s novels, notin an attempt to defend Houellebecq, butto consider a more complex sense of thecontemporary than is admitted by thosewho see his work as lacking in literarymerit or without any redeeming social orethical qualities. Indeed, one of thestrengths of Morrey’s book is that,without excuse or apology, and withscrupulous attention to the subtleties,contradictions and multiple voices thatshape both Houellebecq’s public person-ality and his writing, it treats theconcerns and language of Houellebecq’sfictional and non-fictional writing as‘plucked from the ambient discoursescirculating in our society’ (84–5).A substantial part of Morrey’s book isgiven over to documenting the variouscontroversies that Houellebecq’s fictionhas generated, and it both openly admitsthat his novels cannot escape the mis-ogyny of the tropes that they so insistentlyrestage (‘In Houellebecq’s novels . . .women are blamed and women arepunished’ [18]), and agrees that Houelle-becq’s writing offers an ‘angry critique offeminism and feminists themselves’ (20).But Morrey situates this anger and thesetropes within the broader sense of disgustand disavowal that he identifies inHouellebecq’s novels, finding in themsomething more than the self-indulgentmusings of an objectionable misanthropeor merely a contrarian disavowal of theold, the ugly or the foreign. Emphasisingwhat he describes as the ‘ethnographic’dimensions of this fiction, Morrey makesa compelling case for Houellebecq thesatirist and social critic, a writer whodespairs at socio-sexual life today andcharts its many tragedies—sex tourism inthe context of economic globalisation,‘the agonizing experience of sexlessness’(34), the hardening of individualism, thecompulsion to define selfhood in a culturethat constantly emphasises sex andsexuality, the decline of the family, ‘adeep anxiety about organic matter’ (17)and the status of the ageing body inwestern societies. Throughout, thoughnot continually, Morrey turns to theconcept of the posthuman in order tothink about what might otherwise be seenas Houellebecq’s lack of humanity. Thisconcept allows Morrey, in the earlysections of his book, to consider featuresof Houellebecq’s writing that might nottypically be thought of as posthuman,such as the blankness of its style(‘narrative voice frequently refuses toidentify with the human’ [41]), or thesocial and political consequences of itsfocus on the animalistic irrationalism thatmotivates human behaviour (Houelle-becq’s work ‘suggests that human beha-viour arises out of a complex, butBook Reviews 117nonetheless entirely determined, set ofcauses that include evolutionary instincts,physical, genetic and neurobiologicalconstraints, cultural norms and infantsocialization’ [63]). In the final chapter,the idea of the posthuman returns moreforcefully, and in terms of a morerecognisable literary topos, when Morreyconsiders Houellebecq’s utopian novel LaPossibilite´ d’une ıˆle. Here, we read, readersare offered the image of a society in whichdesire—indeed, touch itself—has beeneliminated by the selective adaptation ofDNA that cloning allows, but Houelle-becq’s novel denies the familiar comfortsor discomforts of speculative realism byreflecting on ‘the spasm undergone bythought in the effort to think the posthu-man, to think beyond the conditions of itsown existence’ (141).Divided into three principal chapters—‘Sex and Politics’, ‘Work and Leisure’ and‘Science and Religion’—which each takeparticular texts as their focus—Extensiondu domaine de la lutte and Les Particulese´le´mentaires, Platforme and La Carte et laterritoire, andH.P. Lovecraft, Rester vivantand La Possibilite´ d’une ıˆle respectively—Morrey’s book is shaped by substantialscholarship and guided by a deep under-standing of the literary and social contextsto which Houellebecq should be con-nected. What results is a careful, attentiveand (most importantly) responsiblestudy, one that responds to the manyprovocations of Houellebecq’s writing.PHILIP LEONARDNottingham Trent Universityq 2013 Philip Leonardhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2013.845154Art and Visual Culture on the FrenchRiviera, 1956–1971: The E´cole de NiceROSEMARY O’NEILLAldershot, Ashgate, 2012282 pages, £65.00, ISBN: 978 0754664710In this well-researched, comprehensiveand generously illustrated study, Rosem-ary O’Neill opens a window onto themultifarious talents and creations ofseveral groups of artists who workedtogether mainly on the French Riviera inthe period 1956–1971. Under the E´colede Nice umbrella O’Neill brings togetherthe Nouveaux Re´alistes (Yves Klein,Arman and Martial Raysse), Fluxus(Ben, Robert Filliou and George Brecht)and Supports/Surfaces (Claude Viallat,Noe¨l Dolla). Conceptualism, play, exper-imentation with everyday objects, spaceand place are explored as the elementsbinding together these diverse artists andthe 15-year coverage runs from Klein’sfirst monochrome shows to the splitbetween Parisian and Nicois members ofthe Supports/Surfaces group during anexhibition at Nice’s The´aˆtre Municipal.This study captures particularly well theways in which the artists involvedresponded to the official cultural andtourist agenda of Nice and its environs,following the high-profile work ofMatisse, Picasso and Cocteau earlier inthe 1950s and during a period of theopening of the Matisse and Le´germuseums and exhibitions of the workof Chagall and Dufy.Moreover, O’Neill successfully reconfi-gures an approach to the everyday, to thereadymade and to recreation that can belocated between the transformativeambition of modernism and the critical118 Book ReviewsCopyright of Modern & Contemporary France is the property of Routledge and its contentmay not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyrightholder's express written permission. 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Douglas Morrey, Michel Houellebecq: Humanity and its Aftermath, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013, 212 pp., £70.00, ISBN: 97818463186

Philip Leonard

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Douglas Morrey, Michel Houellebecq: Humanity and its Aftermath, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013, 212 pp., £70.00, ISBN: 97818463186

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