Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [69]
And I feel more than capable (I would undoubtedly do it if I were ever faced with an audience of aliens) of overplaying my role as a human.
Even in the absence of an intergalactic audience, I cheerfully accept that aping human behavior in everyday life can be signally helpful. It is only in my books—the only things that really matter to me—that I insist on maintaining a certain critical distance with regard to humanity.
Given this preoccupation, which is important to me, I’d like to stress that I have always been on exceptionally good terms with Jews. I am happy to listen to people talk about what it is like to be Jewish (as though this had a particular relevance to being human). In doing so, I implicitly recognize a certainly validity in the Jewish destiny.
I’ve been a great deal more impatient with Russians when they try to talk to me about the “Slavic soul.” I have been very quick, believe me, to send them packing.
Not to mention the Celts or the Corsicans, but now we’re just getting ridiculous.
It is really quite frightening, this affectation peculiar to middling-size mammals, interchangeable on the face of it, to form specific species. This is in stark contrast to the attitude of my dog (a middling-size dog—his legs are a little stubby, but he’s middling-size nonetheless), who recognizes dogness in Chihuahuas and Dobermans alike.
I think, in dealing with humanity, it’s important from time to time to take a bacterial point of view; I specifically use bacteria because some are toxic while others are beneficial (the ones you get in yogurt, for example).
And ask yourself, from a point of view that is as detached as possible, whether humanity is an experiment worth pursuing; weigh up the merits and the drawbacks and, based on the results, try to make the necessary adjustments.
I don’t know much about the history of philosophy, but it seems to me that, after a certain point, there was a regression; that Kant managed to elevate himself to a viewpoint independent of the contingent conditions of humanity, yet valid “for all reasonable beings”; and that since that point we have curtailed our ambition a little too much.
This is a pity, since, having created characters in novels, I know that humanity is treacly; it’s like putting your hand in a jar of molasses, you start finding excuses for everyone and you get bogged down in a senile sickly-sweet niceness.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just a bit pissed off at the moment.
*Houllebecq is referring to a passage in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: “People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.” (From the translation by Constance Garnett.)
*Antoine Frédéric Ozanam (1813–1853) was a French scholar who founded the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II.
†Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire (1802–1861) was a French preacher, journalist, and political activist and is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern Roman Catholicism.
‡Maurice Thorez (1900–1964) was a French politician. He was a leader of the French Communist Party (PCF) from 1930 until his death and served as deputy prime minister of France from 1946 to 1947.
*Königsberg: now Kaliningrad (Russian Federation).
*Michel Platini (born 1955) is a former soccer player, and current president of the Union of European Football Associations; he was a member of the French national team that won the 1984 European Championship, in which he was voted the best player.
May 1, 2008
Dear Michel, I’m back in New York, in a hotel room, which at the moment is the place in the world where I feel best (nothing can be truer than Proust