The Friends and Former Students Reading Club of the University of Valencia meets for the fifth time, 4 February 4 at 18:00 in the Municipal Library 'Exhibition Palace'. This time, the group will discuss the book ‘The Map and the Territory’, the French writer Michel Houellebecq, a novel that deals with art as a business and as obsession.
With this work, managed to build a universal Houellebecq novel whose main theme is the art as a lifestyle that can banish the individual from an ordinary world. But 'The Map and the Territory' also addresses other important topics for today's Western society, such as money and their relative values, love, friendship or relationship with an elderly parent ... The book delves into a country become a tourist paradise and taste the cuisine. Finally, is becoming a novel that looks shamelessly death from euthanasia and look critically at the current consumer society.
Even, the work has the appearance of its author as a character, Michel Houellebecq, an ugly, crazy, bizarre and intense individual, without which the novel had not reached the literary statutes that is winning the Goncourt Award 2010.
In fact, according to the critic says, 'The Map and the Territory ' is an "essential, ambitious novel, that will be undressing slowly removing layers to discover at the end of a tremendous and awful corrosive loneliness that fills all".
The 'Houellebecq phenomenon'
Michel Thomas (known as Michel Houellebecq) is a French poet, novelist and essayist. His novels 'The Elementary Particles' and 'Platform' are landmarks of the new French narrative of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Both literary consideration was granted but more importantly led to 'Houellebecq phenomenon', which caused many exciting debates in the international press.
Both his works as his opinions, very critical with the politically correct thought and the remains of May 68, cost him a series of accusations from the media branded him a misogynist, decadent and reactionary, even Islam phobic. However, the criticisms only managed to increase their popularity and, therefore, sales.
As for 'The Map and the Territory ', Houellebecq recognized that he reproduced texts of the French Wikipedia. The result? A lawsuit for plagiarism, perhaps? No. Jurists and free software activists hung in Internet novel wielding their obligations Wikipedia the free license: free to use, but their products should have the same free license.
The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, 4 March and the book to be discussed is ‘Los años con Laura Díaz’, by Carlos Fuentes.
Date: 4 February.
Time: 18 hours.
Location: Municipal Library 'Exhibition Palace'. Calle Galicia 1, Valencia.
Book: 'The Map and the Territory ' by Michel Houellebecq.
+Info: www.uv.es/amics
Last update: 31 de january de 2014 09:40.
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