Description

Michel Houellebecq, author of five novels including Atomised and Platform, has become possibly the world's most famous literary pessimist. His work declares that life is painful and disappointing, death is terrifying, and the human condition is a nasty sort of joke. He has been wildly successful - translated into over 25 different languages and hailed as the voice of a generation. Beginning with Houellebecq's novels, this book explores the concept of 'Depressive Realism' in literature and philosophy - the proposition that the facts of life are bleak and unkind. Ranging over work by David Foster Wallace, Susan Sontag, Fredric Jameson and Margaret Atwood, Anti-Matter surveys the case for pessimism, asks how a mass culture rooted in sentimentality and trivialisation manages to produce so much cynicism and apathy, and hunts for the space that remains for serious, life-affirming art.

Anti–Matter – Michel Houellebecq and Depressive Realism

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Paperback / softback by Ben Jeffery

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Short Description:

Michel Houellebecq, author of five novels including Atomised and Platform, has become possibly the world's most famous literary pessimist. His... Read more

    Publisher: Collective Ink
    Publication Date: 25/11/2011
    ISBN13: 9781846949227, 978-1846949227
    ISBN10: 184694922X

    Number of Pages: 106

    Non Fiction , ELT & Literary Studies , Education

    Description

    Michel Houellebecq, author of five novels including Atomised and Platform, has become possibly the world's most famous literary pessimist. His work declares that life is painful and disappointing, death is terrifying, and the human condition is a nasty sort of joke. He has been wildly successful - translated into over 25 different languages and hailed as the voice of a generation. Beginning with Houellebecq's novels, this book explores the concept of 'Depressive Realism' in literature and philosophy - the proposition that the facts of life are bleak and unkind. Ranging over work by David Foster Wallace, Susan Sontag, Fredric Jameson and Margaret Atwood, Anti-Matter surveys the case for pessimism, asks how a mass culture rooted in sentimentality and trivialisation manages to produce so much cynicism and apathy, and hunts for the space that remains for serious, life-affirming art.

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