‘Fatalism and Fellatio” is the title the Süddeutsche Zeitung gave last fall to a scathing essay about Michel Houellebecq’s seventh novel, Serotonin. The reviewer assailed Houellebecq’s prose, despairing that even certain female critics should be thrilled by the musings of this “depressive sexist.” It was a familiar assessment. The 62-year-old Houellebecq (pronounced Wellabeck) is an eccentric. He makes passes at female journalists sent to interview him. He co-stars in curmudgeonly films with Gérard Depardieu. He directs pornographic films of his own. For a quarter century, he has been hailed in country after European country as a prophet, and just as widely dismissed as a charlatan. In this he resembles the Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard, one of only a handful of living novelists who can claim a similar Europe-wide resonance: Many of those who read him don’t “get” him.
