Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take On Each Other and the World [Paperback]

As one of Houellebecq's admirers, I couldn't pass this up. You could hardly take two more opposite public personalities than Houellebecq and BHL. Yet they also have many similarities. Both are outsiders relative to French literary/political orthodoxy, which (in my view) tends to be painfully conformist and insipid. Both come across, for most people, as rather repugnant in many respects. And most importantly, both are extremely intelligent writers who match hyper-sensitivity with tremendous force of ideas.

BHL, who can be crudely described as a self-promoting, sanctimonious French neo-conservative (indeed he's a Jewish intellectual who has become a relentless advocate for forceful intervention on human rights grounds), is something of a revelation here. His views are extremely irritating. His public promotion reeks of PT Barnum. Yet he writes about his father's life with a cool, deadpan intensity that, in a few pages, is a more intense and moving narrative than the vast majority of acclaimed social realist novels. He's one of those writers who, even when you disagree with everything he says, has a way of bringing you to a deeper understanding of things through critical engagement. Very engaging.

Houellebecq puts on his usual bathetic show of iconoclastic force, and by sheer nihilistic bravado tends to outdo the more constrained BHL. But again, much of the petulance is given force by personal detail. To take one example, Houellebecq defends himself against BHL's charge that he is insufficiently committed to the accomplishments of the French resistance, specifically the random killing of a Nazi officer in a subway. Houellebecq explains that for him, France died when the mutinies of 1917 took place, events little-known outside France (where they were long a taboo subject). He explains that he knows little about what his family did during the war. But one number he remembers, because it stuck with him, was that his grandmother was part of a family that in 1914 comprised fourteen brothers and sisters. By 1918, there were only three left. Atrocious beyond all measure. But unlike the other combatants, France never experienced a true public reckoning for its complicity in that hideous conflict. "In going beyond the acceptable in that appalling, unjustified war, France lost all right to the love and the respect of its citizens; it brought discredit on itself. And such discredit is, I repeat, permanent." It's difficult to appreciate the complex French attitude towards WWII without understanding this unofficial counter-narrative of a people utterly betrayed by their nation's role in fomenting WWI -- a role which the war's end froze in exaltation, rather than critical condemnation. The official narrative, of course, paints France in WWI as a nation completely justified, heroic, and vindicated against an evil foe. But Houellebecq's unofficial folk narrative explains why the reality was much more complex and conflicted for the French people. This is just one example of the way the two writers' personal confessions give focus and intensity to the otherwise airy ideas tossed about in these letters.

The book does have one truly annoying aspect, however, which is that they spend too much space, measured by a third party's taste, blithering about the mundane details of French literary life -- the publishers, the critics, television appearances, and so forth. Almost none of this is interesting for a foreigner, and most of the specific references will be meaningless. For example, they'll debate at considerable length whether such-and-such editor at some literary journal is a complete dolt or not. I can understand why this was interesting to them, but it is unlikely to interest anybody else except for other French writers. It's akin to listening to a musician whine about record label politics; tiresome shop talk.

A fun read if you are so inclined to actually study both sides of an issue without the time constraints of a two-minute cable news debate.

Since political discourse in the United States has become so profit-driven, the chances of such a book happening here (between known American political personalities) are pretty much zero.

Rush couldn't correspond with John Stewart because it would be "beneath him," just like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't appear in the same movie back in their heyday, because one wouldn't give top billing to the other.

Each political voice here in America is a business enterprise, not a true intellectual interested in debate for the sake of bettering the nation. It is all for profit, not for the people.

It is sad time for the world, but this book offers a small glimmer of hope that some people, in some places, still want to better themselves.

I approached this book naively (having read a little of Houellebecq's fiction, and knowing nothing about BHL except that he's married to the lead actress from "Pauline at the Beach" - not Pauline, but the older one who wants to "burn with love"). Initially, the terms of the "debate" were unclear to me, and anyone would agree that H's intro isn't much help ("We have contributed nothing to the electro-pop revival in France. We're not even mentioned in the credits of 'Ratatouille'") - maybe you're assumed to know something about both authors from the outset. It's interesting, though, how the real "terms of the debate" gradually emerge - nucleating, in particular, around the hypothetical question of whether one would choose to murder a German officer in occupied France - and I'm sure any reader could learn a lot about his/her own tendencies over the course of the book (actually I guess that's the whole point). Personally I became increasingly annoyed by BHL's recurrent bouts of sanctimony, while I felt that Houellebecq (who has the huge advantage of possessing a sense of humor) made a strong case for his seemingly pessimistic worldview - c.f. recent novel that ends with the main character marinating in a puddle of brine - as a sort of humanism, a la Sartre. But many people's sympathies will swing the opposite way, no doubt. I should add that the exchange-of-letters format is necessarily a little stilted, in my view. That's about my only complaint.

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