Lanzarote
by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Frank Wynne
87pp, Heinemann, £9.99
"The transaction between tourist and tour operator... tends to transcend the framework of everyday commercial relations - unless such a transaction, dealing as it does with travel, that most dreamlike of commodities, can be said to reveal the true nature - mysterious, profoundly human, almost mystical - of all commercial transactions." Michel Houellebecq's words might easily be applied to the relations between reader and publisher. Fiction is another sphere where salesmanship tries to part us from our cash, promising to take us somewhere enlivening.
The manipulative distortions of bookmaking and advertising flourish on the attractive jacket, which displays the painted statue of a bosomy blonde mermaid. Doubtless these breasts codedly intimate that Lanzarote is indeed a proper beach book - satirical and disillusioned and all that, but also a guaranteed vivid rendering of touristic sexual hedonism. Our hero, however, is no youthful party animal, but a mildly sociopathic sad sack fortysomething Frenchman on a one-week pack age, who jerks off in his room to MTV with the sound down.
The would-be titillatee won't be altogether disappointed. The mermaid alludes to the pair of female German bisexual nudists with whom the French narrator flatly describes, lick-by-suck-by-groan, his wishful-seeming orgy on a beach - yes, Houellebecq once again pays his dues to medium porn (and to Bergman's Persona). If it is shock you're after, you're in safe hands; this acutely controversial author has even had his own "affaire", a law case over his denunciations of Islam. Many will guiltily enjoy the dismissive, politically incorrect prejudices as narratorial hostility or disdain washes in turn over Belgium, Luxembourg, Norwegians, English tourists, four-wheel-drives, anti-smokers, priests, American imperialists, Muslims, the 20th century...
The hero mentions theories of the extraterrestrial origins of life on earth, only to reveal his true colours: "I didn't know whether such theories had been proven or refuted, and to be honest, I didn't really give a shit." This trope of aggressive, slightly loopy indifference characterises our narrator, so he can skip the usual formalities of description.
In Platform and Atomised this bleakly post-Beckettian, alienated narrative voice allows Houellebecq the freedom to explore disturbing, scarily inconsolable ideas about our world and its disastrous loss of purpose. Here it is somewhat inconsequential. The unnamed narrator is evidently a run-through for the one called Michel in Platform, and Lanzarote is indeed an earlier, sketchier composition than that terrifyingly far-reaching vision of the free world of globalisation, mass sex-tourism and fundamentalist terrorism (it chillingly anticipated the Bali bombing).
Yet it has its own perverse appeal. The pretty cover photo, once you get inside, is reduced to dust by a series Houellebecq himself took of the arid volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote - an island he chose for a reason. The doings of the Eurotourists take place against an alienating waste land, "a barren desert" in which vast geologic forces dwarf human effort: "In front of us, a huge fissure, several metres wide, snaked as far as the horizon, cutting through the grey surface of the earth's crust. The silence was absolute. This, I thought, is what the world will look like when it dies."
· Philip Horne's Henry James: A Life in Letters is published by Penguin.