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The Map and the Territory

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Shortly after the novel opens, its protagonist, an artist called Jed Martin, explains to his elderly father that he plans to ask the celebrated Michel Houellebecq to write the catalogue for his forthcoming exhibition. Although he didn't expect him to have heard of Houellebecq, his father remarks that he has come across his work in the library of his nursing home and advances this opinion: "He's a good author, it seems to me. He's pleasant to read, and he has quite an accurate view of society." Author Robert M. Pirsig uses the idea both theoretically and literally in his book Lila when the main character/author becomes temporarily lost due to an over-reliance on a map, rather than the territory that the map describes. [8]

Yet just as he did in The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq (the author) uses narrative strategies he himself identified in H.P. Lovecraft’s writing in H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Like Lovecraft, the narrative voice is plain and scientific, as if in a report by an expedition member to his society’s journal, couched in objective terms so as to impart a sense of authority. This necessarily means almost everything that happens is summarized, not shown. But by quietly sliding right into the consciousness of the characters the narrative suddenly transforms into a detailed psychological novel, with something of the heft and feel of Sartre or Camus, whom he’s also been widely compared to. Pensé que la cosa se animaría cuando saliera Michel Houellebecq como personaje, pero ni así. Su personaje es demasiado personaje, demasiado tópico; se trata de una oportunidad desaprovechada, esperaba más ironía, más mala leche. Luego se produce un crimen y pensé que así se animaría el cotarro, pero ni así. El crimen sólo sirve para que salgan más personajes igual de planos que todos los demás. Sí, Houellebecq aprovecha para insinuar alguna que otra teoría sobre el arte y analizar/criticar el sistema capitalista, pero todo de una forma muy previsible y nada interesante. Esperaba más sarcasmo y más mala leche. ¿He dicho ya que todo demasiado plano? En ocasiones habrá alguna idea brillante y algún párrafo memorable, pero es todo muy escaso.The prose is a pleasure to read (apart from the over-liberal use of italics) and there are some good jokes, but the book feels underpowered and Olga is no more than a cipher. As the author moves us forward to the year 2035, we sense that not much has happened in Jed’s life in the intervening years." - Adrian Tahourdin, Times Literary Supplement It's not a particular art form, or manner, that interests me, it's a personality, a view of the artistic gesture, of its situation in society.

The first encounter Jed has with his future gallerist also gets at some of how Houellebecq sees the art (and, indeed, the whole commercial) world, as the gallerist explains: Oh, yes, The Map and the Territory is also a murder mystery of sorts -- Houellebecq gets himself (well, his character) killed (and, in a typically Houellebecqian gesture, this is naturally done with the help of a very exclusive machine).

There's a lot of name-dropping -- of both personal names (not only a party attended by French movers and shakers, but Carlos Slim (the world's richest man), showing up at Jed's vernissage) and product names.

The indicatrices demonstrate the difference between the 3D world as seen from space and 2D projections of its surface. Similarly, it is a brand-name-dropping novel, and again the brands are of the sort considered the finest. https://www.admagazine.fr/art/portfolio/diaporama/luigi-ghirri-un-regard-different-sur-le-monde/51630 Does our brain uses its own internal maps to facilitate “physicist/mathematician” in us to construct the maps about the external territories in turn? If so, what is the nature of these internal maps? Are there meta-maps? Evolution definitely fences our perception and thereby our ability to construct maps, revealing to us only those aspects beneficial for our survival. But the question is, to what extent? Is there a way out of the metaphorical Platonic cave erected around us by the nature? While “Map is not the territory” as Alfred Korzybski remarked, join us in this journey to know more, while we inquire on the nature and the reality of the maps which try to map the reality out there.Now that I’ve looked into Houellebecq a bit more I see this was maybe an odd place to start; his other, more misanthropic, sexually-charged books are what got him all the attention. But I don’t care. This was a very satisfying read on many levels, from the narrative style to the prose, from the originality to the humor and insight. The Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte illustrated the concept of "perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves" [6] in a number of paintings such as The Treachery of Images, which consists of a drawing of a pipe with the caption, Ceci n'est pas une pipe ("This is not a pipe"). Michel Houellebecq a-t-il plagié Wikipédia dans son dernier roman?" (in French). LePoint.fr. 4 September 2010 . Retrieved 24 September 2010. They are a barren lot, not well integrated into any social circles, each practically living as an (and on a fortified) island: Jed's father's house has become an isolated fortress in the wrong part of town -- and years later Jed will create his own fenced-in retreat, almost completely seperated from the surrounding world (and from which he eventually emerges, Rip Van Winkle-like, to find a changed world). Then, he meets Michel Houellebecq, a writer as reclusive and despondent as he is, and feels immediately a connection with the man, almost a form of sympathy. Jed is working on a series of portraits defining people by their work, and the last painting he completes is a portrait of the author, which he makes a present of to Houellebecq (the character), even though he could sell it on the art market for nearly a million euros.

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