Julian Barnes (whose England, England is an imaginative novel about an amusement park that strives to simulate all the tourist highlights of the U.K. on a Disneyland-sized plot on the Isle of Wight, which I truly admire) on Michal Houllebecq--favorite of such Greensboro luminaries as Jillian Weise, Poet and Matt Armstrong--in The New Yorker in 2003:

In 1998, I was one of the judges of the Prix Novembre, in Paris: a prize given, as its name implies, late in the literary season...

In the course of a rather tense discussion, it was Vargas Llosa who came up with the best description of “Les Particules Élémentaires”: “insolent.” He meant it, naturally, as a term of praise. There are certain books—sardonic and acutely pessimistic—that systematically affront all our current habits of living, and treat our presumptions of mind as the delusions of the cretinous. Voltaire’s “Candide” might be taken as the perfect example of literary insolence. In a different way, La Rochefoucauld is deeply insolent; so is Beckett, bleakly, and Roth, exuberantly. The book of insolence finds its targets in such concepts as a purposeful God, a benevolent and orderly universe, human altruism, the existence of free will.

More at the link.

The Elementary Particles *is* in fact a great novel, though I must say it's among the single most filthy books I've ever read. I can't believe Matt's taught it in his classes.

The book Barnes was actually reviewing is Platform, which Matt's using in his classes now, which I'm told is excellent, and which I'm likely to buy today using one of the many Amazon giftcards I've stumbled across as late. How do I do it, you ask? It's easy: I simply spend a tremendous amount of money on my Amazon Visa (Apply today, if you haven't already, and we both get $20! The BCR has already made about $200 in kickbacks! Go! Go! Go!!!!), and the more I spend, the more I save.