Kerry Howley

Michel Houellebecq, connoisseur of contempt:

Here, Bernard-Henri, is the first reason (the one I consider honorable) for my nonengagement: an ideological modesty, bordering on atheism. The Russians certainly don’t feel as though they are living under democracy; I believe that they generally don’t give a damn, and who am I to tell them otherwise? For years, I lived in the country—France—where I had the right to vote; I seldom exercised it. Measures were constantly taken in the political sector, notably in the domain of public health, of which I disapproved completely. I will cite, among many other things, the stupid, stubborn prohibition of substances considered “drugs”; the incessant and unrelenting campaigns against alcoholism, advocating condom use, against cocaine, sugary foods, and what have you; the absurd impossibility of buying without a prescription the majority of commonly used medications; and more than anything, as well as symbolic of all the rest: the slow, merciless closing in on smokers. All of this contributed greatly to my isolation from the world and made of me someone who does not consider himself a citizen.

You see, I have never had the impression of living under democracy; I always had the sense that I lived in a sort of technocracy, although I have never been persuaded that this was necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps the technocrats are sensible, and fair. Perhaps I should give up alcohol. Perhaps I should even quit smoking.

That’s excerpted in the latest Harper’s. Houellebecq would find the idea of an engaged anti-statist absurd. In any case, the symbolic value of the Persecuted Smoker Artist — forced into the raw vulgarity of the smokeless bar, stymied by the philistinism of the anti-tobacco censor— really is a gift.