Slide 28
Slide 28 text
Extension du
domaine de la lutte
Michel Houellebecq
The only other book I have read that makes a decent job of getting inside the programmer’s head is Michel
Houellebecq’s Extension du domaine de la lutte, published in English, for some reason, as Whatever. (It also has a
significant bicycle ride in it, like two of the other books, and the narrator is implicated in murder, like one of them).
Unlike Microserfs, this is a distinctly unpleasant if not actually repulsive book, about a depressed and unlikeable
programmer who is damaging to himself and others.
I’ve read it several times.
Michel Houellebecq is a thoroughly troublesome person himself.
He was tried (and acquitted) in France in 2001 of inciting racial hatred in one of his later books; he lived here in
Ireland for a time, to be a safe distance from the death-threats; his own mother wanted to sue him, because one of his
books contains a revolting portrayal of an appalling sluttish and neglectful mother with the same name as hers; he
caused consternation a few years ago when he disappeared, and was feared kidnapped by terrorists (apparently he
forgot he was supposed to be speaking at a conference); another of his books features the savage murder of a
controversial novelist named Michel Houellebecq.
I discovered just last week that his latest project is the starring role in a film called Near-death experience, about a
man who goes out to commit suicide - on his bicycle.
Anyway, though the portrayal of his programmer is extreme and repellent, though it reflects an ideology more than
any reality I recognise, it is, like Microserfs, making a serious and successful attempt towards truth in its portrayal.
Like Microserfs, it dives into the programmer’s thoughts, desires, despairs, relationships; into the programmer’s life.
And like Microserfs, the one part of the programmer’s life it doesn’t get near is the programmer’s programming.