Word: ceccaldi
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...didn't end there. After his final heated dispute with Ceccaldi in 1991, Houellebecq wrote "I knew I would never see my mother again, and I thrilled with joy." Houellebecq later gave an interview in which he described his mother as factually, literally, irrevocably "dead." Now Ceccaldi is back to prove that the filial report of her death was not only exaggerated, but also a really big mistake...
...Ceccaldi get sufficiently cheesed off to launch her assault on Houellebecq's contemptuous and impudently unflappable mystique? In large part because Houellebecq's books generally cast mother figures as dysfunctional, negligent, or psychologically twisted, and he has described his own in just such terms. In his 1998 success The Elementary Particles (published under the title of Atomized in the U.K.), for example, Houellebecq portrays his mother as so self-centered and infatuated with her own rootless, irresponsible hippie credo that she abandoned him in order to be able to travel and explore new experiences at will. Similarly...
...misfortune, he puts my name in another thing, he's going to get a blow of my cane in the mug!", Ceccaldi warns in The Innocent. "Michel and I can begin speaking again the day he goes public, with The Elementary Particles in his hand, and says 'I am a liar, an impostor; I have been a parasite; I never did anything in my life except hurt all those around me. And I apologize...
...Despite the many verbal blows Ceccaldi lands in the book - some below the belt, many studded with expletives - it's probably unwise to expect Houellebecq to accept her terms to a truce. Her account of her earlier life as a wandering, post-war version of a New Age-ist doesn't really differ from Houellebecq's variant of how and why Ceccaldi left him with his grandmother. Where they differ most is in analyzing the consequences of her decision...
...Ceccaldi contends that her son subjected her to such harsh literary treatment because such abuse is "a good money earner" in a world that flocks to Houellebecq's writing "because the spirit of the day is such garbage that he is in step with the time." For now, Houellebecq is not commenting on his mother's book. Here, apparently, is a rare controversy he seems content to sidestep...