The Map and the Territory

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The Map and the Territory" is the story of an artist, Jed Martin, and his family and lovers and friends, the arc of his entire history rendered with sharp humor and powerful compassion. His earliest photographs, of countless industrial objects, were followed by a surprisingly successful series featuring Michelin road maps, which also happened to bring him the love of his life, Olga, a beautiful Russian working--for a time--in Paris. But global fame and fortune arrive when he turns to painting and produces a host of portraits that capture a wide range of professions, from the commonplace (the owner of a local bar) to the autobiographical (his father, an accomplished architect) and from the celebrated ("Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology") to the literary (a writer named Houellebecq, with whom he develops an unusually close relationship). Yet just as he did in The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq (the author) uses narrative strategies he himself identified in H.P. Lovecraft’s writing in H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Like Lovecraft, the narrative voice is plain and scientific, as if in a report by an expedition member to his society’s journal, couched in objective terms so as to impart a sense of authority. This necessarily means almost everything that happens is summarized, not shown. But by quietly sliding right into the consciousness of the characters the narrative suddenly transforms into a detailed psychological novel, with something of the heft and feel of Sartre or Camus, whom he’s also been widely compared to.

The novel chronicles Jed's life and career, the first high-point being his exhibit, 'The Map Is More Interesting Than The Territory', photographic enlargements of Michelin maps. Houellebecq, as always, forced me to think about issues, some that have touched my life and some that may turn up like a bad penny in the future. His descriptions of the art world and the life of a famous writer gave me true insights into what it means to be creative, to be successful, and the struggles that everyone has to be happy. Although I have enjoyed his more sexually explicit novels it was nice to see him write a novel where his philosophies of life are not overshadowed by the controversy of what some would consider an obsession with deviant behavior. The development of electronic media blurs the line between map and territory by allowing for the simulation of ideas as encoded in simulacra, a copy without a real, a semiotic assemblage of references as Baudrillard argues in Simulacra and Simulation (1994, p.1): Here, quite far in, the novel switches from its focus on Jed to the police investigation, which sputters on for a while before being solved completely by accident; yes, Houellebecq is far too lazy an author to ever seriously try his hand at crime fiction (predictably, too, the one crime author that's recommended here is atmospheric Mygale-author Thierry Jonquet). There's a lot of name-dropping -- of both personal names (not only a party attended by French movers and shakers, but Carlos Slim (the world's richest man), showing up at Jed's vernissage) and product names.Una novela entretenida, fácil de leer, bien estructurada y que a mi por lo menos me resultó una excelente puerta de entrada al mundo Houellebecq. Another basic quandary is the problem of accuracy. Jorge Luis Borges' " On Exactitude in Science" (1946) describes the tragic uselessness of the perfectly accurate, one-to-one map: The Map and the Territory is a meditation on the relationship between art and the world it seeks to depict, but it is much more besides. Peppered with references to, and appearances by, figures from French cultural life – egregious literary critics, showy television presenters and, most notably, the novelist Frédéric Beigbeder – it anatomises France's preoccupation with its past and its traditions. It deftly skewers the current obsession with the notion of " terroir" – the link between land and identity – by projecting forwards to an imagined future in which wealthy Chinese immigrants make the French countryside more "authentic" than it has ever been through their excessive respect for local customs.

Through the course of the 1970s and 1980s, Luigi Ghirri pursued his extraordinary project, open-ended and mercurial, marked by empathy for the changing everyday spaces of his time. Over the course of his short career, Ghirri would produce a vast body of photographs without parallel in the Europe of his time and numerous writings which would have an indelible impact on the history of photography. Unfortunately, there's still some sloppiness of argument and presentation; Houellebecq's canvas is pretty much as messy as usual, just not as loud.

The novel affects the reader like a glamorous advertisement for work: it might make one want to work, but obscurely, and not at the real-life tasks that one is supposed to be doing." - Elaine Blair, The New York Review of Books Primer libro que leo de Houellebecq y la experiencia me resultó ampliamente positiva. Era un autor con el que tenía muchas dudas porque las reseñas de sus libros suelen ser muy dispares, y lo que encontré fue una novela ágil, con una prosa sencilla y de muy fácil lectura, que aunque a primera vista puede parecer una novela muy simple, no lo es, porque Houellebecq va minando sutilmente el libro con temas de lo más variados que invitan a la reflexión y hacen que la novela gane en complejidad aún cuando el argumento y la trama de la historia son de lo más sencillo. Houellebecq had already been a contender for the Goncourt on two previous occasions. It was the first time since 1980 that the award had gone to a novel published by Flammarion. Houellebecq commented right after the award that "it is a strange feeling, but I am deeply happy" ( C'est une sensation bizarre mais je suis profondément heureux). [11] Editions [ edit ]

Ce qui me plaît essentiellement, ce sont les passages où Jed écoute son attrait pour la photographie, pour la peinture, puis le montage, sans trop y réfléchir. Finalement, j'éprouve plus d'intérêt pour la description que pour l'analyse. Michel Houellebecq, είτε γιατί είχα ήδη υπόψη μου μερικούς από τους χαρακτηρισμούς που (δικαίως ή αδίκως, δεν θα το κρίνω εγώ) του έχουν κατά καιρούς αποδοθεί με αφορμή κάποιες απόψεις του: μισογύνης, ρατσιστής, αντισημίτης κ.α.. Από την άλλη, βέβαια, ήξερα πως πρόκειται για έναν αναντίρρητα σπουδαίο συγγραφέα και πως ειδικά στον Χάρτη και στην Επικράτεια συμβαίνει το εξής (λογοτεχνικά) ιδιοφυές: ο ίδιος ο συγγραφέας γίνεται μέρος της ιστορίας που διηγείται (σε τρίτο πρόσωπο), διαδραματίζοντας σημαντικό ρόλο στην εξέλιξή της, καθώς, μεταξύ άλλων, στα μισά του βιβλίου θα βρεθεί φριχτά δολοφονημένος (κυριολεκτικά κατακρεουργημένος!) στο καθιστικό του σπιτιού του και η μισή Εθνική Αστυν�En parallèle, Jed témoigne de la disparition des lieux de sociabilité traditionnels et de modes de vie qui leur étaient attachés : Lewis Carroll, in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), made the point humorously with his description of a fictional map that had "the scale of a mile to the mile". A character notes some practical difficulties with such a map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well." Jed's career, and his relationships with his father -- trying to fulfill filial obligations, but largely just going through some motions with a man who, in his decline, continues to go his own way and with whom he feels little connection -- and Houellebecq, a man Jed barely knows but whom he clearly considers a friend of sorts ("you've become important for me" he tells the writer), allow Houellebecq(-the-author) to muse and reflect on his usual obsessions. There are practically no children here, and procreation is presented as being on its last legs: not only did Jed's difficult birth render his mother unable to have any more children, Houellebecq eventually even throws in an infertile couple whose dog is infertile too.

A frequent coda to " all models are wrong" is that "all models are wrong (but some are useful)," which emphasizes the proper framing of recognizing map–territory differences—that is, how and why they are important, what to do about them, and how to live with them properly. The point is not that all maps are useless; rather, the point is simply to maintain critical thinking about the discrepancies: whether or not they are either negligible or significant in each context, how to reduce them (thus iterating a map, or any other model, to become a better version of itself), and so on. In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan expanded this argument to electronic media with his introduction of the phrase " The Medium is the Message" (and later in the book titled The Medium is the Massage). Media representations, especially on screens, are abstractions, or virtual "extensions" of what our sensory channels, bodies, thinking and feeling do for us in real life. It was public knowledge that Houellebecq was a loner with strong misanthropic tendencies: it was rare for him even to say a word to his dog. The first encounter Jed has with his future gallerist also gets at some of how Houellebecq sees the art (and, indeed, the whole commercial) world, as the gallerist explains: It was then, unfolding the map, while standing by the cellophane-wrapped sandwiches, that he had his second great aesthetic revelation. This map was sublime. Overcome, he began to tremble in front of the food display. Never had he contemplated an object as magnificent, as rich in motion and meaning as this 1/150,000-scale Michelin map of the Creuse and Haute-Vienne. The essence of modernity, of scientific and technical apprehension of the world, was here combined with the essence of animal life. The drawing was complex and beautiful, absolutely clear, using only a small palette of colours. But in each of the hamlets and villages, represented according to their importance, you felt the thrill, the appeal, of human lives, of dozens and hundreds of souls ...”Neil Gaiman retells the parable in reference to storytelling in Fragile Things (it was originally to appear in American Gods): When Jed meets Houellebecq he realizes he is not finished with the series. The final painting has to be this writer. Houellebecq is extremely hard on himself. His portrayal of himself is rather scathing. Note to self: if I prostitute myself as a character in a novel please remember to emphasis my better qualities. Bret Easton Ellis writes himself into the novel Lunar Park which I really enjoyed, though there are reviewers who fervently disagree with me. Martin Amis also inserts himself in the hilarious book Money. Three winners for this reader. The central figure in the novel is the artist Jed Martin, who over the course of his life goes through three creative phases, interrupted by long, seemingly fallow periods. Por tanto, filosofía pura y también arte contemporáneo y arquitectura, eso de entrada. Pero además el autor reflexiona sobre una Francia convertida en parque temático para los turistas, con la exaltación del 'terroir' y las características propias de cada región recogidas en cadenas de hoteles 'con encanto' y donde la gastronomía es una parte importante de la recuperación del pasado ideal: