France has produced its fair share of “bad boys” in literature. Michel Houellebecq is among the most recent, and he is probably the ur-French bad boy of literature, with this book as his breakthrough novel.
Being a Francophile, I was inclined to like this book, but Houellebecq is a tremendous writer. Insightful and profound passages in this book intertwine with the humorous, embarassing, and painful elements of two men’s lives. It is frankly a sight to be seen, this book: certain passages will make you put it down and have a revelation.
You might not agree with all of the book. You may be offended (you probably will). But Houellebecq’s writing reminds us why people started to like literature at all (and I’m not talking about just storytelling): because it moves us.
Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common but little else.
Michel is a molecular biologist, a thinker and idealist, a man with no erotic life to speak of and little in the way of human society.
Bruno, by contrast, is a libertine, though more in theory than in practice, his endless lust is all too rarely reciprocated.
Both are symptomatic members of our atomised society, where religion has given way to shallow 'new age' philosophies and love to meaningless sexual connections.
Atomised tells the stories of the two brothers, but the real subject of the novel is the…
This bookserved as a primary inspiration for my book. One of Dick’s later works, it follows a drug-addled protagonist, Horselover Fat, in his search for the Vast Active Living Intelligence System: an artificial AI that coincides with Dick’s vision of a gnostic God.
There are few books, in my view, that will change how you will see the world. Typically, experience does that, but this book is almost a substitute for experience. At the least, it will disorient you. Like Dick’s other works, itis disorienting.
You may not remember the story, the characters, or even the message! But you will be left speechless. It is a mood more than a book, and in writing about an artificial AI simulation, one can say that Dick was revealing more about the nature of this world than he let on.
It began with a blinding light, a divine revelation from a mysterious intelligence that called itself VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System). And with that, the fabric of reality was torn apart and laid bare so that anything seemed possible, but nothing seemed quite right.
It was madness, pure and simple. But what if it were true?
This memoir of the world’s most prolific lover and traveler is one of the best descriptors of life in 18th-century Europe. Similar to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, this book is an immanently readable and occasionally embarrassing experience of being exposed to a man’s most private thoughts and, in a word, confessions.
The experiences of Casanova are fascinating, if problematic, by today’s standards. The degree to which sexual relationships between men and women have stayed the same (while changing profoundly in other ways) is stunning to witness in the story, which sees Casanova jumping from mistress to mistress, falling in and out of love on a weekly basis, and counseling fellow libertines on their own exploits.
At one point, Casanova was imprisoned by the Venician elites for being accused of Freemasonry and magic. Indeed, Casanova is casting a spell on the reader! But it is not a bad one. He is hypnotizing you with the memories of a time that is exceedingly familiar but also profoundly alien.
Seducer, gambler, necromancer, swindler, swashbuckler, poet, self-made gentleman, bon vivant, Giacomo Casanova was not only the most notorious lover of the Western world, but a supreme story teller. He lived a life stranger than most fictions, and the tale of his own adventures is his most compelling story, and one that remained unfinished at the time of his death. This new selection contains all the highlights of Casanova's life: his youth in Venice as a precocious ecclesiastic; his dabbling in the occult; his imprisonment and thrilling escape; and his amorous conquests, ranging from noblewomen to nuns.
Brandon is yet on another adventure! This time, in graphic form.
This book is one of the first novels of its kind: a philosophical novel that is illustrated. Touching on themes like futurism, memory, and psychoanalysis, itis bound to keep you turning pages and admiring the sights for years to come!
