The world as a supermarket

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The world as a supermarket (French: Interventions, recueil d'essais ) is a collection of literary and film reviews, conversations and open letters about his own work, as well as theoretical essays on the role of literature and the state of society of the French writer Michel Houellebecq from 1992 to 1997.

Content and subject

From the author's foreword:

The novel, of the same shape as man, should normally be able to contain everything about him ... Basically everything should be able to be turned into a single book to write on until his death ... The most obvious common denominator of those gathered here Text is that I wasn't asked to write it. In keeping with the above, I could have considered using it in a larger work. I've tried, but rarely succeeded.

The collection

  • Jacques Prévert is an asshole (published in July 1992 in number 22 of Lettres francaises magazine)
  • The party
  • Fata Morgana (published in December 1992 in number 27 of Lettres francaises magazine)
  • The lost look (published in May 1993 in number 32 of Lettres francaises magazine)
  • Empty sky
  • The creative absurdity (appeared in the new edition of number 13 of Lettres francaises magazine)
  • Conversation with Jean-Yves Jounnais and Christophe Duchatelet (published in February 1995 in number 199 of Art Press magazine)
  • Letter to Lakis Proguidis
  • Approaches for confused times; in this:
    • Contemporary architecture as an accelerating factor in locomotion;
    • Set up shelves
    • Simplify the bills
    • A brief history of information
    • The advent of fatigue
    • The world as a supermarket and a mockery
    • The poetry of continuing movement
  • The Art of Skinning (published in 1995 in number 5 of Les Inrockuptibles magazine)
  • Conversation with Sabine Audrerie (published in April 1997 in number 5 of Encore magazine)
  • Conversation with Valère Staraselski (published on July 5, 1996 in the newspaper L'Humanité)
  • Travel report
  • Dead times; in this:
    • What are you looking for here? The German
    • The lowering of the retirement age
    • Calais, Pas-de-Calais
    • Big city comedy
    • Just a question of habit
    • What are men good for?
    • The bear skin.

criticism

The essays show the author of Elementary Particles (novel) from a more personal side and with unexpected humor that seems to contradict the pessimism of his prose .

“ You meet the real Houellebecq in his volume of essays . The supposed nihilist and cynic analyzes half the present. "( Andreas Isenschmid , Der Tages-Anzeiger )

expenditure