In the Presence of Schopenhauer

Forging my way through my stacks of Must Reads, I'm encouraging myself by tackling some of the shorter works in the piles. Just last night, I now only finished this great book, but re-viewed I'm Thinking Of Ending Things and starteed Haruki Murakami's The Strange Library.
Michel Houellebecq is my favorite fascist, sexist, islamophobe writer. I know that's not a stellar recommendation, but the truth is, I've had a friend like him, always saying exactly the wrong thing in social gatherings, but he makes me laugh out loud and think hard.
As Michel puts it, he came to his Schopenhauer epiphany rather late in life, when he was 25-27. His coming upon the Aphorisms and The World As Will And Representation. He was going to translate the whole book, but this pamphlet ends up being a less arduous read. It's a conversation between Houellebecq’s exegesis and Schopenhauer’s passionate paean to human suffering & art. The thorniness of Schopenhauer's thinking is leavened by Houellebecq's brilliant and pithy asides and examination.
By the end, it really seemed like a conversation between two friends across centuries of struggle.
A great book.

Presumably the Amz Look Inside feature is to aid the prospective buyer. But many, many times a book has a preface and long introduction not written by the book's author. This book of Houellebecq's is a good example. All you get of Houellebecq is a tiny bit about when he first encountered Sho..er.
While the pref & intro are of some interest, they are not what one buys the book for. I know all this is done by computer. But it would be very useful if the algorithm gave, say 10% of the book, or selected a chunk in the middle. This annoying Look Inside issue turns up on many, many books, but especially those by famous writers. No one is going to write a 20p intro to my book. So Please Help!

Reading this brisk brief book reminded me of Nietzsche's dictum that one should treat the big questions like a cold bath: quickly in, do what you need to get done, quickly out. Also reminded me of the parallel pleasures of plunging into slippery rocky rushing mountain streams — biting icy cold triggering thrilling shivers, jarring bracing gasps of exhilaration. Parallel also to my experience reading Houellebecq's novels.

This book presents us Andrew Brown's English translations of Houellebecq's French translations of German passages by Schopenhauer, condensed and very sufficient for philosophical satisfactions, and with translations of Houellebecq's comments on these, also packed tight. While it's been said that poetry is what gets lost in translation, this work shows that despite and through the filters of translation something essential remains for direct apprehension — perhaps like gold nuggets that after so many sieves sparkle more clear.

Treated usually with brisk clarity are big themes including the futility of desire and willing, the inescapable fixed limitations of character and earthly life, the virtues of aesthetic contemplation and apprehensions of the sublime, the springs of artistic inclinations and creations, the debasements of these in the modern world, the dark truths at the core of existence, and the possibilities in inescapable tragedy for some small rescue of some slivers of joy.

Four stars rather than five only because more pages would've provided for a longer soaking in an immersion often pleasantly warm.

IF YOU'RE interested in the French author Michel Houellebecq and what he reads, and what he thinks about what he reads, and even if you would like to sit down with him and listen to him chat a bit about what he reads, then this is the book for you. A lively and cogent preface by Agathe Novak-Lechavalier provides the overview, then six short chapters present the author's various remarks in response to various excerpts from the works of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Thus you enter the presence of Michel Houellenhauer. It's as if he tosses chunks of Kant, Comte and Schopenhauer into a blender, gives the machine a jolt and pours out a mixed and lumpy soup. Nothing whole or digestible is retained, but it slides along. The chapter titles have more solid content than the chapters themselves. But if you're a fan of MH, go ahead -- have some fun with Schopenhauer.

Readable for a modern French author( he is a novelist not a postmodern philosopher) . Contains in one page a pointed criticism of Nietzsche’s account of the poet.

This is a wonderful personal account of Houellebecq's encounter with Schopenhauer and MUST be read