30083
Author: Michel Houellebecq
File Type: epub
The most celebrated and controversial French novelist of our time now delivers his magnum opusabout art and money, love and friendship and death, fathers and sons. The Map and the Territory is the story of an artist, Jed Martin, and his family and lovers and friends, the arc of his entire history rendered with sharp humor and powerful compassion. His earliest photographs, of countless industrial objects, were followed by a surprisingly successful series featuring Michelin road maps, which also happened to bring him the love of his life, Olga, a beautiful Russian workingfor a timein Paris. But global fame and fortune arrive when he turns to painting and produces a host of portraits that capture a wide range of professions, from the commonplace (the owner of a local bar) to the autobiographical (his father, an accomplished architect) and from the celebrated (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology) to the literary (a writer named Houellebecq, with whom he develops an unusually close relationship). Then, while his aging father (his only living relative) flirts with oblivion, a police inspector seeks Martins help in solving an unspeakably gruesome crimeevents that prove profoundly unsettling. Even so, now growing old himself, Jed Martin somehow discovers serenity and manages to add another startling chapter to his artistic legacy, a deeply moving conclusion to this saga of hopes and losses and dreams. **From Booklist Starred Review Houellebecq (The Possibility of an Island, 2006) has been outraging and galvanizing readers with his meticulously composed, cold-souled novels for the last 12 years. In his latest, winner of Frances Prix Goncourt, he addresses the vatic nature of creativity and our ever-expanding definition of art while telling the story of an emotionally shut-down artist, Jed Martin, and a reclusive writer named (what else?) Michel Houellebecq. Jeds inexplicably powerful photographs of old Michelin maps bring him fame, wealth, and love. Brooding and insular, he next embarks on a series of paintings that pay homage to people and their work as the Industrial Revolution gives way to the digital revolution. Jed tracks down despondent and disheveled Michel to ask him to write catalog copy for an upcoming exhibition, thereby initiating a melancholy bond. Up to this point, Houellebecqs novel is supremely ensnaring in its acute and arch dissection of human endeavors elevated and crass, the latter including the tyranny of trends and the so-called free market. Suddenly, things take a macabre turn as were plunged into an appalling crime scene, which gradually morphs into a disquieting paean to natures indomitability. Houellebecqs bewitching journey on the river of art to the cave of death and decay is a tale of eviscerating insight, caustic humor, troubling beauty, and haunting provocation. --Donna Seaman Review Archly sarcastic, cheerily pedantic, willfully brutal.... But what remained with me of this singular novel is a powerful sense of the Houllebecquian mood, which the critic Paul Berman once characterized as depressive lucidity, and which here consists of a heightened awareness of the impoverishment of everyday life and its landscape, along with a dammed-up pool of heartbreak. Judith Shulevitz, The New York Times Book Review Michel Houellebecq is the most interesting, provocative and important European novelist of my generation. Period. No one else comes close. He has written two or maybe three great books, and his latest, The Map and the Territory, is one of them. Bret Easton Ellis A serious reflection on art, death, and contemporary society, The Map and the Territory is a tour de force.It is part crafty page-turner, part sociological inquiry, part satire, part mystery novel, part artists biography. In its seamless collage of artful pastiche, the novel captures with perfect irony the tone and texture of twenty-first-century discourses, from Wikipedia articles to operating instructions, from tacky pop songs to pompous art reviews in Le Monde. In the process, it offers original insights into the museumification of contemporary France, the eerie coincidence between art and death, an exegesis of socialist writer William Morris, and meditation on art as a practice, a produce, and a business. Cecile Alduy, *The Los Angeles Review of Books * Deeply amusing A book of supreme importance, this is not to be missed. Library Journal Deadpan funny...A brilliantly astute work of social critique. Publishers Weekly A revelation for all who follow the controversial French novelist, whether they love him or loathe him.... Here he achieves a richness and resonance beyond his previous work ... a tender romance, a meditation of the function and value of art and a police procedural.... Very smart, very moving and occasionally very funny. Kirkus (starred review) A trenchant, sharp-tongued social commentator.... What kept me reading is Houellebecqa scratchy, uncomfortable mind, his catalogue of hatreds and aversions, and the flurries of inventiveness and invective they inspire. Laura Kipnes, Bookforum Praise from the UK Beautifully, accurately translated.... Accessible and highly enjoyable. If ever there was a novelist for our globally dysfunctional times its Michel Houellebecq.... Long cast aside as the bad boy of books, [his] latest novel has seen him brought in from the cold, and embraced by the literary establishment for what hes always been not much short of a genius. The Mirror (4-star book of the week) One of the most important facts about Michel Houellebecq...is that he is a first-rate prose stylist.This novel was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2010 and now, as it finally arrives in English in a finely nuanced translation by Gavin Bowd, it does not disappoint....Teasing and entertaining.... A page turner. Literary Review Very likely his best [book] ever, a serious novel about aging and death that also employs its authors trademark lugubrious wit towards some delicious exercises in satire and self-parody.... A challenging, mature and highly intelligent book. The Daily Telegraph This is the brilliant and controversial French writers most intellectually ambitious book.... Funny, astonishing and authoritative. The Guardian A dark master of invention.... In a world of copycatting and fakery, Michel Houellebecq is an exceptional writer and a stand-out original. Evening Standard An astonishing writer.... The Map and the Territory is funny, shocking, brutal and unbearably poignant.... Sublime. Scotland on Sunday All novelists everywhere have benefited from [Houellebecqs] audacity. Like Flaubert with Madame Bovary, Lawrence with Lady Chatterleys Lover or William Burroughs with Naked Lunch, his temerity has recharged the form and reminded people what the novel can do and what latent, incendiary power it has at its disposal. The Sunday Times A great read.... A wonderfully strange and subversive enterprise. The Guardian
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Created
1 year ago
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application/epub+zip
English