SOURCE: Abecassis, Jack I. “The Eclipse of Desire: L'Affaire Houellebecq.” MLN 115, no. 4 (September 2000): 801-26.

In the following essay, Abecassis contends that the outpouring of critical controversy surrounding Les Particules élémentaires stemmed from Houellebecq's iconoclastic assault on Western ideological, moral, and metaphysical ideals surrounding sexuality and the rights of individual self-fulfillment.

Sous l'être humain, il y a la brute Configurée en profondeur Mais au fond de sa vie sans but, L'homme attend le deuxième sauveur.(1) 

The Affaire

Paris, October 1998. The routine of la rentrée littéraire breaks. Instead of the usual quarrels limited to a small circle of literati, there erupts a serious and sustained public debate in literary reviews, newspapers, radio and television. After a pause of many years, perhaps dating back to the publication of Voyage au bout de la nuit and L'Etranger, Michel Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires becomes the focal...