Atomised  

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"In reality, men don't give a damn about their kids, they never really love them. In fact, I'd say men aren't capable of love; the emotion is completely alien to them. The only emotions they know are desire -- in the form of pure animal lust -- and male rivalry. There used to be a time when, late in life a man would come to feel a certain affection for his spouse -- though not before she'd borne his children, made a home for them, cooked, cleaned and proved herself in the bedroom. That sort of regard meant they enjoyed sleeping in the same bed. It was probably not what the women were looking for, it might even have been a delusion -- but it could be a powerful feeling. Strong enough that even if men still became excited -- though to a decreasing degree -- at getting a little piece of ass on the side from time to time, they literally could not live without their wives. When, out of unhappiness, their wives left them, they hit the bottle and died soon afterwards -- often in a matter of months. Children existed solely to inherit a man's trade, his moral code and his property. This was taken for granted among the aristocracy, but became the norm at every level of society. That's all gone now: I work for someone else, I rent my apartment from someone else, there's nothing for my son to inherit. I have no craft to teach him, I haven't a clue what he might do when he's older. By the time he grows up, the rules I lived by will have no value -- he will live in another universe. If a man accepts the fact that everything must change, then he accepts that life is reduced to nothing more than the sum of his own experience; past and future generations mean nothing to him. That's how we live now. For a man to bring a child into the world now is meaningless. Women are different, because they continue needing to have someone to love -- which is not and has never been true of men. It's bullshit to pretend that men need to fuss over their children, play with them or cuddle them. I know people have been saying it for years, but it's bullshit. After divorce -- once the family unity has broken down -- a man's relationship with his children is nonsensical. Kids are a trap that has closed, they are the enemy -- you have to pay for them all of your life -- and they outlive you." --Atomised, tr. Frank Wynne

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Les Particules élémentaires (The Elementary Particles) is a novel by the French author Michel Houellebecq, published in France in 1998. It tells the story of two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, and their mental struggles against their situations in modern society. It was translated in English by Frank Wynne as Atomised (Heinemann,UK)/ The Elementary Particles (Knopf, US) and won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for writer and translator. A film version Elementarteilchen premiered in the 2006.

Contents

Plot summary

Despite the essentially elaborate scope of the plot (i.e. the eventual emergence of cloning as a replacement for the sexual reproduction of the human race), the narrative focuses almost exclusively on the bleak and unrewarding day to day lives of the protagonists.

Setting and narrative

The story unfolds as a sort of framed narrative, so despite the events described therein having taken place mostly in 1999, the story is essentially set some 50 or so years in the future. A similar device was used by Kurt Vonnegut in the novel Galápagos, however unlike Vonnegut, Houellebecq only reveals the frame to the reader in the epilogue. Large sections of the story are presented in the form of suppertime storytelling dialogues between Michel, his childhood sweetheart Annabelle, Bruno, and Bruno's post-divorce girlfriend Christiane.

Characters

The story really focuses on the lives of Bruno Clément and Michel Djerzinski, two French half brothers born of a hippie type mother. Michel is raised by his maternal grandmother and becomes an introverted molecular biologist who is ultimately responsible for the discoveries which lead to the elimination of sexual reproduction. Bruno's upbringing is much more tragic as described: shuffled and forgotten from one abusive boarding school to another, he eventually finds himself in a loveless marriage and teaching at a lycée. Bruno grows into a lecherous and insatiable sex addict whose dalliances with prostitutes and sex chat on Minitel do nothing to satisfy him, to the point where he finds himself on disability leave from his job and in a mental hospital after a failed attempt at seducing one of his students.

Reception and recognition

The novel's publication caused quite a stir in French literary circles, and it sold hundreds of thousands of copies and vaulted Houellebecq into the French intellectual and literary spotlight during the summer and autumn of 1998. The vivid, almost pornographic sexual descriptions were a frequent target of criticism, and Houellebecq himself attracted both scorn and praise for his erratic proclamations and behaviour on television interviews and the like. The author was eventually awarded the Prix novembre in recognition of the novel.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Atomised" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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