The possibility of an island - M. Houellebecq

I fought the cringe and reread my notes on another book I had read from the same author since starting this blog, “The map and the territory” (link). I note with some discomfort that I must have somehow liked it and I had completely forgotten everything about both his contents and how it made me feel. The silver lining is that at least this whole blog idea somehow makes sense.

I already wrote about Houllebecq’s themes there, so no need to go through them again. The point is that they are not even explicitly angesprochen, they are just referenced in a way, the whole book is something the typical character of one of Houllebecq’s books could have written and would have been as such tolerable if summarised by the author in a few lines. Reading it all does not really make sense, it’s not (just) that I don’t like the book, I don’t see the point of the book, there is no narrative, there is no concept, there is no social value, not that I would necessarily agree with the social value if it were there or with an aesthetic I would despise, but then one could say: ah so that’s what it was about, which is what I cannot do right now. It’s like a joke without a punchline.

Leafing through the pages I marked I found two points worth mentioning. The first is a quote which hits close to home:

Non è più così facile avere relazioni, a partire da una certa età […] Non si hanno più tante occasioni di uscire né la voglia. E poi ci sono molte cose da fare: le formalità, le pratiche… la spesa, il bucato. Si ha bisogno anche di più tempo per occuparsi della propria salute, semplicemente per mantenere il corpo in funzione. A partire da una certa età, la vita diventa amministrativa - soprattutto.

I also had the distinct impression not too long ago of having become the manager of myself - I am both the project and the team, but mostly in my conscious function the manager. It feels as meaningful as most projects.

The other thing which I save if at some point I want to open this page again is Kaprekar’s routine (link), of whose existence I was just not aware. Maybe one could program something to visualize the routine per numeri di più di quattro cifre? It is either fixed points or loops, so one would expect trees and circles?