'Platform' vs 'Are You Experienced'

I tried to encourage a couple of my friends to read 'Are You Experienced', but they weren't particularly swayed. I thought it was great, obviously. I can't believe the rave reviews on the back and front of 'Platform'. 'Reading Houellebecq is never deflating; it is, rather, a source of constant inspiration and delight. Would that we could produce his like in England'. I like Houellebecq a lot, but his writing is just - I would have thought - obviously deflating. Beautiful, sometimes, too, but surely the two aren't mutually exclusive? And secondly, England does have similar writers. I thought.

'Are You Experienced' is described in reviews as lazy, featuring a boring main character, and insufficiently sarcastic.

I thought Platform was a disapointment. I'm now reading Ryu Murakami who is a bit more interesting on the sex trade. I haven't heard of AYE. Should I read it?

"insufficiently sarcastic" seems a rather poor criticism in this day and age.

houellebecq is certainly deflating, albeit spiked with moments of scary-sharp ow-my-eyebrain elevation.

maybe it's a buddhist thing.

what fiddo said - its largely depressing but no one else now writes so honestly about despair.

I found "Are You Experienced" rather dopey. I will lend you my copy, Mary.

Mary, I'm loathe to recommend 'Are You Experienced' to you, in case you think it's total trash! You're so well read, and it's kind of bad. I mean I don't think it's bad but I can conceivably see how someone might. It's simple, stylistically, like 'The Graduate'.

I read what some of William Sutcliffe's favourite books were in 'The Guardian'. One was 'The Great Gatsby'. I totally don't get 'The Great Gatsby'.

Some of Houellebecq's generalisations seem brilliant, like the central idea in 'The Extension of the Domain of the Struggle' about the extension of economic liberalism to the sexual domain, but others are dumb, like the 'men are like cattle, women are so nurturing' stuff or the idea in Platform about modern women not understanding how men really just want simple relationships. There seems to be this problem with his female characters. There was no main female character in 'Whatever' so that was okay but in 'Atomised', there was Christine, and I thought at the time 'this character is just completely strange and doesn't make sense' but sort of dismissed it as an aberration but Valerie in 'Platform' is exactly the same. The male characters come across as really interesting, but the women are like these bizarre cracks in the ceiling or something, gaps in the text, or whatever, meek, loving ... ? His main characters always seem to work on two levels - as a sociological generalisation and an 'art is truth and detail' rendering of an individual - and the men are great, flawed, both kind and cruel, but the generalisation you would make from his female characters is so off.

In contrast I thought the depiction of female sexuality in 'Are You Experienced' was much more interesting and 'important'.

Thanks Rosemary, I would like to borrow it.

The women in Platform are such a fantasy -- the idea that someone could get in touch with their true sexuality while on a sex tour in Thailand is so laughable. Ryu Murakami's book is much more suspicious about anyone getting any pleasure from either side of the exchange -- prostitute or client. (Though his movie, Tokyo Decadense, is perhaps a much more stylized look at the after-hours Japanese world.)

I was getting quite annoyed today, thinking, it was okay in 'Whatever' when the main character is lonely but now his characters are getting more and more popular and having lots of sexual partners (like in Lanzarote) and it's pretty irritating how little awareness there is in the books of female desperation and duplicity.

Oh and also I would like to read the Murakami book