Reception
John Montague reviewed the book for ''Baudelaire is Houellebecq's dark master in the lyrics and prose poems of ''The Art of Struggle''; he pays an obvious homage in "Fin de Soirée", which, with its descriptions of a desolate night ("Suspended without any foothold in the world, night might seem long to you"), evokes Baudelaire's "Le Crépuscule du soir" ("Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminel . . ."). ... Paris tends to be defined by monuments; the inverted bathtub of Sacré-Coeur, thePaul Batchelor wrote in ''Trocadéro The Trocadéro (), site of the Palais de Chaillot, is an area of Paris, France, in the 16th arrondissement, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. It is also the name of the 1878 palace which was demolished in 1937 to make way for the Palai ...facing up to the tapering neck of theEiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "' ..., the martial bulk of theÉcole Militaire École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savo ..., all now potential targets, or at least scares on the evening news. But Houellebecq's wayfarer wanders through a desert of apartment blocks which is utterly at variance with the popular vision of Paris as a graceful and shimmering city; instead he is like a character in the early cityscapes of T. S. Eliot, unhappy "In the midst of the towers and the ads . . .".
The argument of Houellebecq's poetry is much the same as that of his fiction: the illusion ofdiversity Diversity, diversify, or diverse may refer to: Business *Diversity (business), the inclusion of people of different identities (ethnicity, gender, age) in the workforce *Diversity marketing, marketing communication targeting diverse customers * ...has created cultural homogeneity and proscribed individualism. Intimacy is impossible, its place having been taken by casual sexism ("Her secretary meat had passed its date") and morbid attitudinising: "Fortunately, Aids is watching over us." ... The translators, Delphine Grass and Timothy Mathews, have attempted to convey the meaning of the original as accurately as possible, rather than recreate musical effects such as rhyme. This is a legitimate position; but the absence of rhyme is felt sharply because it is so integral a part of Houellebecq's message.
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