Excerpt from Submission by Michel Houellebecq, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Yes, in theory you're definitely macho. But then you have such refined tastes in writers: Mallarmé, Huysmans. They don't exactly play to the macho base. Plus you have a weirdly feminine eye for household textiles. On the other hand, you dress like a loser. I could see you cultivating a macho slob thing, but you don't like ZZ Top, you've always preferred Nick Drake. In other words, you're a walking enigma."

I poured myself another bourbon before responding. Aggression often masks a desire to seduce—I'd read that in Boris Cyrulnik, and Boris Cyrulnik isn't fucking around. When it comes to psychology, no one's got anything on him. He's like a Konrad Lorenz of human beings. Plus, her thighs had parted slightly as she waited for me to answer. This was body language, and the body doesn't lie.

"There's nothing enigmatic about it, unless you psychologize like a women's magazine, where everyone's reduced to some kind of consumer demographic: the eco-responsible urban professional, the brand-conscious bourgeoise, the LGBT-friendly club girl, the satanic geek, the techno-Buddhist. They invent a new one every week. I don't match up with some preconceived consumer profile, that's all."

"You know … the one night we see each other again, don't you think we could try to be nice?" I heard the catch in her voice and was ashmed. "Are you hungry?" I asked, to smooth things over. No, she wasn't hungry, but we always ended up eating. "Would you like sushi?" She said yes, of course. Everyone always says yes to sushi. From the most discerning gourmets to the strictest calorie counters, there's a sort of universal consensus regarding this shapeless juxtaposition of raw fish and white rice. I had a delivery menu, and she was already poring over the wasabi and the maki and the salmon rolls—I didn't understand a word of it, and didn't care to. I chose the B3 combination and called in the order. I should have taken her out to a restaurant after all. When I hung up, I put on Nick Drake. We sat there not saying anything for a long time, until I broke the silence by asking, idiotically enough, how school was going. She gave me a reproachful look and answered that it was going well, she was planning to get a master's in publishing. Relieved, I managed to steer the conversation toward a more general topic, which happened to validate her career goals: how even though the French economy was falling apart, publishing was doing all right and had increasing profit margins. It was amazing, even, to think that the only thing left to people in their despair was reading.

"You don't seem to be doing too great yourself. But then you always seemed that way, really," she said without animosity, almost sadly. What could I say? I couldn't exactly argue.

"Do I really seem that depressed?" I asked after another silence.

"No, not depressed. In a sense it's worse. You've always had this weird kind of honesty, like an inability to make the compromises that everyone has to make, in the end, just to go about their lives. Let's say you're right about patriarchy, that it's the only viable solution. Where does that leave me? I'm studying, I think of myself as an individual person, endowed with the same capacity for reflection and decision-making as a man. Do you really think I'm disposable?"

The right answer was probably yes, but I kept my mouth shut. Maybe I wasn't as honest as all that. The sushi still hadn't arrived. I poured myself another bourbon, my third. Nick Drake went on evoking pure maidens, princesses of old. And I still didn't want to give her a child, or help out around the house, or buy a Baby Björn. I didn't even want to fuck her, or maybe I kind of wanted to fuck her but I also kind of wanted to die, I couldn't really tell. I felt a slight wave of nausea. Where the fuck was Rapid'Sushi, anyway? I should have asked her to suck me off, right then. Then we might have stood a chance, but I let the darkness settle and thicken, second by second.

Copyright © 2015 by Michel Houellebecq and Flammarion

Translation copyright © 2015 by Lorin Stein