The Map and the Territory (Vintage International)

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In a televised interview given after the Goncourt award, Houellebecq declared that the main themes of the novel were "aging, the relationship between father and son and the representation of reality through art". [5] 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."

I’ve known several guys in my life who wanted to become artists, and were supported by their parents; not one of them managed to break through. It’s curious, you might think that the need to express yourself, to leave a trace in the world, is a powerful force, yet in general that’s not enough. What works best, what pushes people most violently to surpass themselves, is still the pure and simple need for money.” I finished this book convinced that Alan Greenspan is one of the great minds of our time. Because of his involvement in the Federal Reserve and in other government capacities for so many years, his insight is valuable. He also freely admits to not foreseeing the extent or ultimate effects of the recent financial crisis, although one gets the impression that he was aware of the unwiseness of certain governments dictated credit policies. Sometimes stuff sounds good but doesn't work out on paper. Houellebecq, the one outside the book I’m not sure about the one inside the book, usually brings up the themes of the politics of sex and the way lust motivates all aspects of our lives, but in this book he just settles for some philosophical musings on prostitutes. This is the third book I’ve read by him and this is the book he spends the least amount of time talking about sex… libido slowing down Mr. Houellebecq? Gregory Bateson, in "Form, Substance and Difference", from Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), argued the essential impossibility of knowing what any actual territory is. Any understanding of any territory is based on one or more sensory channels reporting adequately but imperfectly: A frequent coda to " all models are wrong" is that "all models are wrong (but some are useful)," which emphasizes the proper framing of recognizing map–territory differences—that is, how and why they are important, what to do about them, and how to live with them properly. The point is not that all maps are useless; rather, the point is simply to maintain critical thinking about the discrepancies: whether or not they are either negligible or significant in each context, how to reduce them (thus iterating a map, or any other model, to become a better version of itself), and so on.This volume presents essays by pioneering thinkers including Tyler Burge, Gregory Chaitin, Daniel Dennett, Barry Mazur, Nicholas Humphrey, John Searle and Ian Stewart. Together they illuminate the Map/Territory Distinction that underlies at the foundation of the scientific method, thought and the very reality itself.

Jed finds a faint possibility of friendship in two men. First, a reclusive novelist named, yes, Michel Houellebecq agrees to sit for a portrait and write catalog copy for Jed’s next exhibition. But the writer is eventually murdered and his body extravagantly dismembered. Soon after, Jed meets a police inspector, Jasselin, who investigates the crime. The moment for a deeper connection with him comes and goes, and Jed remains alone. https://www.admagazine.fr/art/portfolio/diaporama/luigi-ghirri-un-regard-different-sur-le-monde/51630

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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. Lichfield, John (8 September 2010). "I stole from Wikipedia but it's not plagiarism, says Houellebecq". The Independent. UK. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022.