I just read Michel Houellebecq's Platform: A Novel It is a depressing book, but I couldn't put it down. I started reading it at about 6:00 p.m. last Friday and finished it at 2:30 a.m. In between I had dinner with my family, gave the kids a bath, and put my youngest to sleep for the night. The gist of the novel is that contemporary Western life has numbed us from feeling passion and achieving truly authentic relationships between men and women. The culture of materialism, pornography, consumerism, and secularism penetrating almost every dimension of our life profanes that which was once sacred. Think about it. It is difficult to find one aspect of life--family, religious institution, community--which is not in some way not influenced by money, either lamenting the lack off or moaning the excess of. The irony is that many of our politicians who opportunistically preach the virutes of the family or other sacred institutions do little to support them. As a result, like Michel Renault, the novel's protagonist, the empty void that used to be filled by community and family, remains unfilled. It is obvious that Houellebecq has read quite a bit of sociology. He freely quotes from Auguste Comte and makes many unattributed illusionsto Emile Durkheim, especially The Division of Labor in Society. One thing about the French is that they are pretty well-versed in sociology. You've got to respect a country that recognizes that the social group, not the individual is what creates meaning.
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