Lanzarote

The wonderful world of defied expectations

I expected to hate Ennemis publics. The book is a collection of letters two writers of not particularly pleasant personalities exchanged with each other. I though I would find nothing interesting in it, and only started reading it because I wanted to read all of Houellebecq's books.

Imagine my surprise, when my interest and investment in the conversation grew with each page I turned. It ended up being one of my absolute favourite books; it reminded me of Andrzej Pilipiuk's Raport z Północy (Polish for "Report from the North"), another one of my favourites. Both are non-fiction, both are full of personal stories and observations. And both for some reason hit just right for me.

That is probably another reason why I expected more from Lanzarote. If I liked everything I have read from Houellebecq, even Ennemis publics, surely I will like Lanzarote too!

Not much ado about anything in particular

And then it turned out to be just a short story about a short vacation of Some Guy. The Some Guy goes on the vacation he is not particularly excited about, meets Another Dude who is even less excited about the whole thing, and they try to make the vacation a bit more exciting by doing a bit of sightseeing. The Some Guy picks up Two German Lesbians, about whom he is not particularly excited, but he will not turn down an extended one-night stand (which turns into a whole-vacation stand); the Another Guy is too miserable to join, even when the Two German Lesbians ask him to. The vacation ends. Some Guy goes back to his life; Another Dude joins a cult, because it is better than going back to his life; Two German Lesbians go back to Germany.

It is not exactly what I would call a bad vacation, I can think of several worse ways to spend a week, but, to me, it is a book about nothing. I would compare it to Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which was also about nothing. It is not like there is nothing at all happening in both stories, but what does happen seems just so... ordinary and unremarkable.

Lanzarote ends on a pretty disgusting note, but that is pretty much it, and the ending does not carry any deeper insight — it looks like it is there purely for its shock value. I think all other Houellebecq's books that I had read have given me something to think about, or showed me something in a new light. In contrast, Lanzarote just carried me a long from start to finish, and then just left me there, at the end of a ride, with not much to show for the time I have spent reading the book.

The book is at times disgusting, at times pornographic, at times befuddling. It is not boring, probably because I find Houellebecq's writing style engaging, but feels a little bit like eating french fries: it is satisfying for sure, but it should not be the foundation of your diet.