Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [125]
Letter of February 16, 2008
In praise of cold, nonconfessional literature (Flaubert); in praise of self-interest, of war, and of maximum dissimulation (Pessoa); this is Bernard-Henri Lévy’s response.
Letter of February 20, 2008
In which Michel Houellebecq talks about his father and the relationship between his father and his mother and in so doing lifts a corner of the veil.
Letter of February 22, 2008
In which Bernard-Henri Lévy talks about his own father, who, it is revealed, practiced the same profession as one of the celebrated heroes of a novel by Robbe-Grillet.
Letter of March 1, 2008
In which Michel Houellebecq talks about Céline and Proust and recounts how his father, an alpine guide, went skiing with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Antoine Riboud. How he himself has developed a passion for post-Soviet Russia—the girls, the music, the energy.
Letter of March 12, 2008
In which Bernard-Henri Lévy vehemently denounces the crimes of “Putinism” and begins his confession, revealing some of the true reasons (honorable and shameful) why writers have to worry about the world and being politically committed.
Letter of March 16, 2008
In which Michel Houellebecq talks about his reasons (honorable, shameful) for not being politically committed—and in passing discusses the reasons for his exile in Ireland. Inaptness for obedience. Mistrust of heroic posturing.
Letter of March 21, 2008
Bernard-Henri Lévy picks up on a remark by Michel Houellebecq (in between a quote from Goethe and commentary on a text by Dürrenmatt) about Houellebecq’s inability to distinguish between just wars and those that are not just. Rimbaud and the Paris Commune. Mallarmé and the suffering of the working classes.
Letter of March 24, 2008
Michel Houellebecq does not like chaos: “disorder results in the greatest injustices.” Philippe Muray is mentioned; the pressing imperative to distinguish between “reactionaries” and “conservatives”; what might persuade Michel Houellebecq to return someday to France.
Letter of April 4, 2008
Bernard-Henri Lévy is terrified by the void, but likes secret agents. De natura rerum or Genesis? Lucretian materialism or the hodgepodge of the Prophets, of Spinoza or Emmanuel Levinas? Bernard-Henri Lévy believes one must choose. Humanity does not have many great books and, alas, one must choose.
Letter of April 10, 2008
First trip to Germany as a teenager. First dazzling encounter with Pascal. In which we learn much about the Christian temptations of Michel Houellebecq.
Letter of April 17, 2008
Memories of uncles Moïse, Hyamine, Maclouf, and Messaoud. The infamy of Jean-Edern Hallier. In which we realize that a child born, like Bernard-Henri Lévy, in the aftermath of the Shoah could not be Christian nor truly Jewish.
Letter of April 26, 2008
In which Michel Houellebecq rejoices to see that the Jews are prepared to face down the new pantheism, which is the true religion of our times. There is talk of Comte, of Chateaubriand, of the Bible, and of Schopenhauer (again).
Letter of May 1, 2008
In which Bernard-Henri Lévy, horrified, refuses to discuss the madness of Kant, the chess games of Marcel Duchamp, or the secret kinship between Comte and Althusser to solicit Michel Houellebecq’s reaction to his mother’s book.
Letter of May 8, 2008
Michel Houellebecq’s response, in which he talks about his mother, a little about his sister, and about the hateful pack which, he believes, will hound him until death and a little beyond.
Letter of May 12, 2008
Bernard-Henri Lévy responds, relying on Spinoza’s theory of sad passions, predicting the rout of the pack.
Letter of May 20, 2008
One must “carry on writing.” But what is the writer’s Achilles’ heel? Money? Fame?
Letter of May 27, 2008
On the fact that one writes as one makes love and vice versa. That Baudelaire is categorically a better poet than Rimbaud. Who is right, the Lithuanian rabbis, disciples of Vilna Gaon, or Sartre