January 7 will appear the eighth novel of the writer. Politics, life and death: the themes of the oracular book of our "world writer".
The novel begins at the end of 2026. 2027 is a presidential year, the president cannot stand for re-election, he has been in power for two terms. He will have occupied the supreme magistracy - Houellebecq often uses this expression - between two dates, 2017 and 2027, which are prime numbers. In the ministerial and administrative spheres where part of the novel takes place, we find Normaliens, or Enarques, to think thus, in a limit mode of magical thought.
We are in 2027, and the world is confronted with strange attacks, pseudo-attacks at first, videos posted on the net. On one of them, for example, we witness the beheading - with a guillotine - of the French Minister of Finance, Bruno Juge. The latter is alive and well, the video was filmed with impressive special effects. There will be a gradation in these attacks, first bogus, then real without causing any victims, then five hundred deaths suddenly. All the police forces in the world are perplexed: it is impossible to understand the terrorists' claims, nor their motivations, which seem contradictory and can be attributed as much to the extreme right as to radical environmentalists, even to other groups.
So much for the background. The novel centers on the character of Paul Raison, and his family. Paul is the closest collaborator of Minister Bruno Juge, he acts as chief of staff without having the title. When Paul Raison's father, Edouard, has a stroke, the whole Raison family meets in the house in Villié-Morgon: Paul's sister, Cécile, and her husband Hervé; the youngest brother, Aurélien, married to a perfect plague, which contrasts with the other female characters. In Annihilate , pride of place is given to the kindness of women.
The novel is quite classic, it is divided into seven sections, which form three movements: the stroke of the father, the conjectures on the political attacks and the electoral campaign, the disease of Paul. We could say: Houellebecq gives us the trajectory of the last months of a fifty-something who wonders about life, death, love, who quotes Pascal and Epicurus, who is moved by posters in his teenage room - on the walls, above the narrow bed, are a Kurt Cobain poster and a Matrix poster. You could say that, and it wouldn't be wrong.
We are used to it, Houellebecq surprises us by evoking, in passing, marginal and sometimes perfectly forgotten figures of literary or political history. Thus, one of Paul Raison's nieces works at the Sorbonne on Elémir Bourges and Hugues Rebell. So we talk about Theodore Kaczynski and, at the turn of a paragraph, Maximine Portaz. Let's leave it to the reader to find out who they are. Let's say we expect to be surprised, and a bit rushed in our cultural references. But where Annihilation unfolding surprises us the most is in the of the story. The world is not running to its doom, at least France is following a logical slope, stable in change: the presidential candidate is a TV star, a certain Benjamin Sarfati could have been Hanouna if Houellebecq did not eliminate Baba with a stroke of the pen or the keyboard. Finally, it is the idea: to elect a juggler who asks only to enjoy under the gold of the Republic, to modify the constitution to eliminate the Prime Minister, and to establish a real presidential system. The Minister of Finance, Bruno Juge, friend of Paul Raison, would then become the real master of politics, without being president. This is post-democracy: a president, a few ministers but not too many, a reduced national assembly, a preserved senate. France, therefore, does not run to ruin in the novel. On the contrary, it has once again become a leading economic power, thanks to Bruno Juge. This Bruno Judge is a perfectly worked character, in which we catch a glimpse of Bruno Lemaire. A loner who haunts Bercy day and night, who only feeds on pizzas and Caprice des Dieux. A guy focused on his files, shiny, seemingly dull. He will prove to be a good tribune during the campaign. He embodies the honest politician, and he discovers love.
There is, in Annihilate soothing , an almost slowness, while what is happening is rapid and brutal: the disease, the attacks, the electoral campaign, and even the exfiltration of the father of Paul Raison, locked in an EHPAD. Most of the narration features Paul Raison and his family, and the place of family reunions is the Maison du Haut-Beaujolais, of which Houellebecq offers us the meticulous design. “There were three houses, of unequal size, […] a stable and a large barn. »In the drawing, the buildings form a closed unit, with five sides, which corresponds more or less to the pentagon that the terrorists - those who broadcast the videos on the Internet - use (they also add circles, for good measure and good. figure). The father of Paul Raison, formerly of the DGSI, wondered, before his stroke, about these terrorist acts, and he left only a thin file in which we find the signature of the terrorists, a code page, and an engraving by Baphomet. A frumpy young guy but sharp as much on the lines of code as on the diabolical references explains, with seriousness, that starting from a pentagon one can draw a pentacle, that the meaning of this pentacle depends on its orientation, etc. Besides, all you have to do is draw dots on a map - staff? - and, you see, everything is explained, or at least everything tends to prove that there is in the attacks a certain form of logic and significance. To annihilate is not a novel with twists and turns. To annihilate is not a novel with compartments either. Not even, no doubt, a symbolic novel. Houellebecq simply distributes his remarks in terms of family and politics. It's the same thing. We do not understand the motivations of terrorists, Paul Raison barely understands what is happening to him and what is happening to his family. His father is now mute, he himself has a toothache (and it will get worse ...), the words do not pass, the letters drawn around the pentagons and the circles of the terrorists' signature are indecipherable. A parallel life develops in dreams, which are told to us as an integral part of the story. These dreams, sometimes very realistic, are also indecipherable.
Annihilate ratio , under its cardboard cover with dimensions relating to the golden , with the title and proper names without capital letters, contains a romantic melancholy without a start. There is no question of now or of now + 1, moreover there is even no question of the health crisis that shook the president's first term. To annihilate is not a “moment” or an “observation”, it is a book entirely centered on itself which only looks at the human condition, practically out of context. In this Michel Houellebecq, by bringing his character Paul Raison to the threshold of death, it seems to offer us a peaceful novel. To use Yourcenar's last sentence in L'euvre au noir , we could say “and it's as far as we can go in the end of Paul Raison”.
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