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A polarizing, provocative French novelist says he’s written his last book
Michel Houellebecq says Annihilation will be his last novel.
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Early in Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, its professor hero talks about what makes a writer worth reading: “[A]n author is above all a human being … and whether he writes very well or very badly hardly matters — as long as he gets the books written and is, indeed, present in them. (It’s strange that something so simple, so seemingly universal, should actually be so rare …)”
Few writers are more present than Houellebecq, the international literary superstar who’s one of a handful of writers who invariably jangles my nerve-ends. Trenchantly ironic about our self-centered society, his novels are barracuda-toothed provocations, idea-laced fictions filled with dodgy sex, joyless masculinity, swipes at Islam, derision toward ’60s freedoms, contempt for the media elite, attacks on the EU and casual misanthropy. Houellebecq is surely the most acclaimed literary figure to have praised Donald Trump. In France, he’s routinely called a genius — or a creep.
In fact, his fiction is brainier, trickier and more stimulating than his polarizing reputation suggests. It’s not just that his novels have been eerily prophetic about what’s happening in society. He cuts to the heart of things in a way that makes most of his American counterparts look like well-schooled functionaries doodling prettily on the margins of life.
A sense of doom — social and personal — looms over his new novel, Annihilation, which the 68-year-old Houellebecq has said will be his last. Although far from his best, it’s a fascinating book tinged by mortality. You can feel this one-time bad boy crawling out of his comfort zone to do something he’s pointedly not done before: explore middle-class family life and the healing power of love.
As usual, Annihilation features a de-centered male hero. Fiftyish Paul Raison is a high-level Paris bureaucrat who’s in a sexless marriage to another bureaucrat, Prudence. Bored and vaguely disaffected — he doesn’t believe in much of anything — Paul’s going through the motions, when his world starts falling apart.
In the public sphere, there’s a series of cyberattacks designed to send seismic shocks through the existing global order. In his personal life, his father has a stroke, and Paul’s forced to engage with his family, especially the devoutly Catholic sister he’s been largely ducking for years. Even as he’s confronted by an often-byzantine medical system, he must deal with a group of anti-government radicals, and a health crisis of his own.
Although deftly translated by Shaun Whiteside, Annihilation is slow getting started and too diffuse by half — I began skipping the boring dream sequences. But Houellebecq has always had one of those narrative voices that draws you in, as in this book’s opening line: “Particularly if you’re single, some Mondays in late November or early December make you feel as if you’re in death’s waiting-room.”
Houellebecq’s major works — Atomized, Platform, Submission and Serotonin — were all worshiped or reviled for their seeming cynicism. Yet beneath their dryly funny, sometimes shocking surfaces, they’re the work of a radical conservative — to borrow a description Norman Mailer used of himself. Houellebecq’s books dissect how, in our modern society, people, in particular men, feel hollowed out. “Anything can happen in life,” says the hero of Platform, “especially nothing.”
No longer bound by the old religious, national and tribal belief systems, Houellebecq’s characters inhabit an atomized world whose individualism leads to the bleak consolations of technology, consumerism and the soulless sex typified by pornography. His great satire, Submission, in which Islam takes over France, was pilloried as an attack on that religion. In fact, it’s a book about a French culture so decadently anemic that it finds a kind of comfort living under the certainties of Sharia law.
Dismissive of both the Left and market-driven society, Houellebecq is such a sly and ambiguous writer that I’m not always sure when he’s kidding. I often identify with his characters, and even when I find certain pages repellent, Houellebecq challenges my perceptions. He gets me asking whether I’m in touch with my real self, or whether I’ve unthinkingly donned a set of attitudes passed on by our culture.
And in Annihilation, he surprised me. After a career spent, as he puts it, “clearing away the sources of hollow optimism,” he ends Paul’s story with some of the tenderest pages — and tenderest sex — of his career. This is a book about discovering the ties that bind and about letting yourself be bound by them. Filled with acceptance if not serenity, it has the happiest ending you can have in a book by a writer who doesn’t believe in happiness.
Ariana Grande arrives at the 83rd Golden Globes on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif.
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The brightest stars in TV and film kicked off the 83rd annual Golden Globes tonight in Beverly Hills, Calif. with Ariana Grande, Noah Wyle, Teyana Taylor and George Clooney are just some the names who walked the red carpet. This year’s ceremony was hosted by comedian Nikki Glaser.
Here’s a glimpse of what some of the attendees are wearing tonight.
Michael B. Jordan
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Ryan Coogler and Zinzi Evans
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Michel Martin
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Steve Inskeep
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Queen Latifah
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2026 Golden Globes
Nikki Glaser Shouts Out Rob Reiner …
Dons ‘Spinal Tap’ Hat at Close of Show
Published
Rob Reiner wasn’t forgotten at this year’s Golden Globe awards … because host Nikki Glaser paid tribute to him just weeks after his murder.
Here’s the deal … during the sign-off for the awards show, Nikki came onstage wearing a black and white “Spinal Tap” hat — the band which serves as the subject of Reiner’s iconic 1984 mockumentary of the same name.
Worth noting … the Golden Globes do not typically air an in memoriam — so this was the only time Reiner was mentioned at the show.
As you know … Rob and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their Los Angeles home last month. Their son Nick Reiner has been arrested for murder in connection to the case.
TMZ.com
Nick’s arraignment was scheduled for last week … but, his lawyer Alan Jackson dropped out of the case — leaving Nick with a public defender and new arraignment date set for late February.
Jackson told a gaggle of reporters outside the courthouse that Nick’s not guilty … but, he simply can’t defend him. He did not provide a reason for his withdrawal.
Our new documentary “TMZ Investigates The Reiner Murders: What Really Happened” dives into Rob and Michele’s grisly deaths … as well as Nick’s history of mental health issues and even how his weight gain set him on a dangerous path.
“TMZ Investigates The Reiner Murders: What Really Happened” is now streaming on Hulu.
On-air challenge
Today’s puzzle is called “Pet Theory.” Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name in which the first word start starts PE- and the second word starts T-. (Ex. What walkways at intersections carry –> PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC)
1. Chart that lists all the chemical elements
2. Place for a partridge in “The 12 Days of Christmas”
3. Male voyeur
4. What a coach gives a team during halftime in the locker room
5. Set of questions designed to reveal your traits
6. Something combatants sign to end a war
7. Someone who works with you one-on-one with physical exercises
8. Member of the Who
9. Incisors, canines, and premolars that grow in after you’re a baby
10. Nadia Comaneci was the first gymnast to score this at the Olympics
11. What holds the fuel in a British car
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge was a numerical one from Ed Pegg Jr., who runs the website mathpuzzle.com. Take the nine digits — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You can group some of them and add arithmetic operations to get 2011 like this: 1 + 23 ÷ 4 x 5 x 67 – 8 + 9. If you do these operations in order from left to right, you get 2011. Well, 2011 was 15 years ago. Can you group some of the digits and add arithmetic symbols in a different way to make 2026? The digits from 1 to 9 need to stay in that order. I know of two different solutions, but you need to find only one of them.
Challenge answer
12 × 34 × 5 – 6 – 7 + 8 – 9 [or] 1 + 2 + 345 × 6 – 7 × 8 + 9
Winner
Daniel Abramson of Albuquerque, N.M.
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from listener Ward Hartenstein. Think of a well-known couple whose names are often said in the order of _____ & _____. Seven letters in the names in total. Combine those two names, change an E to an S, and rearrange the result to name another famous duo who are widely known as _____ & _____.
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, January 15 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
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