Platform [Hardcover]

Michel Houellebecq (Author), Frank Wynne (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0375414622 | ISBN-13: 978-0375414626 | Publication Date: July 15, 2003

Michel Renault is a human void. Following the death of the father he barely knew, he endures his civil ser-
vice job while eking out an existence of prepackaged pleasure, hollow friendships, TV dinners, and pornography. On a group holiday in Thailand, however, he meets the shyly compelling Valérie, who soon pursues an agenda that Michel himself could never have thought possible: his own humanization.

Back in Paris, they plunge into an affair that strays into S&M, public sex, and partner swapping, even as they devise a scheme to save Valérie’s ailing travel company by capitalizing on the only trade Michel has seen flourish in the Third World. Before long, he quits his job, and their business model for “sex tourism” is gradually implemented. But when they return to Thailand, where Michel’s philosophy will be put into practice, he discovers that sex is neither the most consuming nor dangerous of passions . . .

From a suburbanized West crippled by hate crime to an East subsumed by materialism, Michel Houellebecq explores—with characteristic provocativeness, but also with surprising tenderness—the emotions that seem most resilient to any influence: love and hate. Platform is, as Anita Brookner has written, “a brilliant novel, casting a prescient eye on the abuses and inequalities that lead to wider trouble.”

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The controversial French author of The Elementary Particles (2000) turns in another unremittingly bleak novel. In addition to amplifying his views on the decadence of Western civilization, Houellebecq displays an absolutely chilling prescience in his depiction of a violent Muslim sect. Misanthropic, sexually frustrated bureaucrat Michel embarks on a "Thai Tropic" package tour, amusing himself with snide commentary on his fellow vacationers and frequent visits to sex clubs. Although he is attracted to business executive Valerie, he has trouble engaging her in small talk. However, when they return to Paris, their relationship quickly turns passionate as they explore sadomasochism and public sex. Michel talks Valerie and her business partner into marketing sex tours to the Third World, selling them on his theory that Westerners have lost touch with their own sexuality. But when they decide to sample one of their own tours, their resort becomes a flashpoint for Islamic hatred. Houellebecq is unrelenting as he meticulously constructs a world that mirrors his own cold vision and that cuts uncomfortably close to the bone. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“Howard Stern meets Albert Camus in this novel of sex and alienation . . . Houellebecq has sharp observations about ennui in the Western world and rage in the Muslim one.”
–Kyle Smith, People

“Astute, graceful, sexually preoccupied . . . Houellebecq rewards with glimpses through his particularly keen lens.”
–Arthur Hirsch, The Baltimore Sun

“A novel at once brilliant, charming, puzzling, annoying and sometimes downright repulsive . . . The work of a highly talented writer.”
–Jean Charbonneau, Cleveland Plain Dealer

“The talented, cynical Houellebecq blasts Western culture and Islam in his odd, subversive entertainment.”
–Carlo Wolff, The Boston Globe

“Blunt, arrogant, coolly detached, ultra-sophisticated, impeccably and simply presented, intellectually self-assured and very self-conscious . . . This is the real thing, the kind of novel that ends up in the canon.”
–Michel Basilières, The Toronto Star

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (July 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375414622
• ISBN-13: 978-0375414626
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #208,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Welcome to the Wild and Erotic World of Michel and Valérie!, July 25, 2003

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Platform (Hardcover)

A small conceit of the English translation of Michel Houellebecq's PLATFORM is that certain words and phrases the author originally used in English are boldfaced, presumably so that readers will know that they carried a sort of extra Anglo-Saxon punch in the original text. However, the boldfaced words also recall the talent of Frank Wynne, Houellebecq's translator. I mention these words because I otherwise might not have remembered that I was reading a translated text, so clearly and accurately has Wynne rendered the author's unmistakable, inimitable voice.

With that said, this is not a voice all readers will appreciate. Protagonist and first-person narrator Michel Renault lives a small, sour existence as a middle-aged, middle-management civil servant. His Paris contains no romance and less contentment, and so he travels --- but his coldly assessing eye hardly allows him to enjoy his journeys or his arrivals. Sex in a variety of forms preoccupies him, and it is through sexual experiences that he seems to at least feel alive. While the women on his tour mainly disgust him (the young and nubile he deems "sluts"; the older and more aware he derides in various ways), women whom he can pay for sex receive the small bits of appreciation he can muster.

Still, it is a fellow tour group member, Valérie, with whom Michel connects when back in Paris. Michel, whose barely restrained anger towards his recently dead father once prevented him from pairing off with anyone besides his own hand, finds Valérie's combination of submissive generosity and high-paying job as a tourism executive irresistible. Their relationship brings him so much contentment that his boss comments that he seems happy. Despite their calm domestic bliss, the pair (both of whom seem quite addicted to orgasm) soon finds themselves drawn to more and more extreme erotic adventures.

Most of the time, PLATFORM seems more like one for Houellebecq's extreme yet articulate views than it does a novel --- yet his frozen-eyed comments on capitalism, religion, and gender politics are uncomfortably close to the secret thoughts so many people have. When Michel and Valérie devise a plan to turn her company's tours into sex holidays, they return together to the Thailand where he once experienced the zipless pleasures of a remarkably sanitary sex worker...For a moment, it seems that everyone will be happy, even Valérie's dour boss, Jean-Yves (given his straitlaced viewpoint, Houellebecq seems to say that it's no wonder his wife moonlights as a dominatrix). But alas, an early discussion Michel has with his father's housekeeper-mistress, whose Muslim honor avenged resulted in Renault pére's murder, presages the tragic end of the resort community and Michel's brief personal paradise. That this paradise is based on Western woman's supposed boredom with the all-too-familiar sex-for-love equation and the purported eagerness of Eastern woman to trade sex for the simple things (groceries, reliability, good manners) makes Houellebecq's Utopia terribly disturbing --- and terribly thought-provoking.

--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provoking...., November 26, 2004

By 

Matko Vladanovic (Zagreb, Croatia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Platform (Hardcover)

Those of you who are interested in European discourse will remember the crusade on author of this book two years ago, which culminated in whole dossier published in Finkelkraut's European Messenger in which leading pens of Euro culture raised their voices trying to intelectually subdue this book and statements presented in it.
Inraged cries of every religious community out there, from islam to christianity ensured the succes to this book.
We are witnesses of methods of mass media so one should always look with scepticism too all kind of fusses that are raised towards todays literature. But this book really deserved it. And that, believe it or not is a good thing to literature.
Ever since the begining of time, writer was supposed to shock community, from Boccacio's Decameron to Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Sluggishnes of thought and slowness of mind that dominated Europe are finaly broken with this book.
Every concept out there is driven trough, you may almost call it Occham's razor, deconstructig society in general, not willing to admit any kind of supremacy to culture or historicism author tries to present the new world which even in today's democracy (whatever that means) stands out as twisted and pervert....At least to majority of people.
Read this book... It is a begginig of a new epoch....

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Houellebecq is one of the best writers living today, September 26, 2004

By 

A. Moore (London) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Platform (Hardcover)

Platform is probably the best of Houellebecq's novels (the somewhat daft ending of 'Atomised' spoiled it for me). Houellebecq is one of the best writers living today. Next to his novels, most others just seem weak in comparison, beating around the bush, never really getting to grips with what we might call real life. Houllebecq tells it as it is; he does not mess about. He writes frankly about the things that really matter, the issues that really concern us, with acute and often brutal incisiveness. A common criticism of Houellebecq is that he digresses too much from the plot and frequently goes off on tangents, weaving philosophies and observations on life in general into the narrative. I would say that this is one of his greatest strengths. The beauty of novels is that this kind of digression is possible, whereas in a movie script, for example, it is not. It enriches the novel - it gives it depth. Anyone who has seen the film 'Whatever' as well as reading the book will know that as good as the film is, it could never have contained all the hilarious observations and incisive social commentary that the book does.