he seems like either just straight loser clique or a loser/nerd hybrid

but clique is much less salient outside the US so its amorphous, which is intriguing

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5593321&forum_id=2...id#48078764)

i ordered 9 more of his books

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5593321&forum_id=2...id#48090783)

edit: one more

What is it, I ask, that has driven the rise of the French far right in the past 20 years? “Immigration,” he answers without hesitation. “And also, the total scorn of the elites.”

--

I meet Michel Houellebecq at Maison Péret, a busy brasserie serving regional French cuisine in Paris’s 14th arrondissement. He’s bang on time for lunch — which is to say he arrives at 6pm. “I can’t have a meal without drinking wine,” he had explained in a brief email exchange before our encounter. “After that, it’s all over, I can’t stop drinking, so I try to delay the fateful hour.” Impressed by his attempt at moderation, I am happy to agree.

--

I mention a 2019 essay in which he called Donald Trump a good president and wonder if he will be cheering him on in this US election too. “Yes,” he says. “Trump won’t start wars,” he adds, topping up our glasses.

What if he stops supporting Ukraine? “That’s good,” Houellebecq says. But Ukrainians want to liberate their territory, I say. “What do I care? At the start of the war, I was surprised because I thought Ukraine was Russian,” he says. “It’s better for nature to take its course,” he adds in the spirit of might is right. “People who have humanitarian ideas are a catastrophe. It doesn’t work and motivations are doubtful.”

--

Ernaux has said she can’t stand his depiction of women. As a woman, I must admit, it’s tricky to meet Houellebecq. He’s famous for describing us as sex objects with a sell-by date of pretty much 25. I tell him that I find this problematic — and depressing. He nearly jumps up from his chair, looking genuinely upset. “I think it’s dishonest,” he says. “All women, and really all, try to be as desirable as possible. And then when they start losing at the game, they contest the system that they were the first to uphold.”

“Look, I didn’t create the world,” says the 68-year-old, now married to Qianyum Lysis Li, whom he met when she was writing a thesis about his work at the Sorbonne. His wife cooks, he says, an admired female characteristic in his novels, but only dishes that he doesn’t eat. “Some vegetarian things,” he sighs. He sticks to ready-made microwave meals, like many of his characters.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5593321&forum_id=2...id#48090805)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5593321&forum_id=2...id#48090866)