# Interventions (Houellebecq book)

Interventions is a collection of texts by the French writer Michel Houellebecq, including essays, interviews and polemical articles. The book exists in three versions, published in 1998, 2009 and 2020. The later versions are mainly expansions with new material, although a few texts only appear the earlier editions. The third version, Interventions 2020, was published in English in 2022.

## Background

The French writer Michel Houellebecq came to public attention in the 1990s. His first novel Whatever was published in 1994, and although it initially received little attention, it gradually became renowned over the next few years. When his second novel Atomised was published in 1998, it became a major literary event in France, was printed in 177,000 copies and sold to many countries. It launched Houellebecq to prominence and made him a subject of much analysis in the media, where he was described as controversial, as a new trend and as an example of nihilist literature.

## Publication

The first version of Houellebecq's text collection Interventions was published by Éditions Flammarion in 1998. A new version, expanded with new content and a few texts from the first version removed, appeared through Flammarion in 2009 as Interventions 2. In 2020, Flammarion published a further expanded version as Interventions 2020. This version was published in a pocket edition by J'ai lu [fr] in 2022 under the title Interventions. Interventions 2020 is the only version that exists in English translation. It was translated by Andrew Brown and published by Polity in 2022.
* Interventions (1998)
* Interventions 2 (2009)
* Interventions 2020 (2020)

## Contents

The English titles and publication info for the texts in Interventions 2020 are from the "Sources" section of that book. Additional info is from Interventions and Interventions 2.
| English title | Original title | First published | First published | I | I2 | I2020 | Notes |
| English title | Original title | Date | Publication | I | I2 | I2020 | Notes |
| "Jacques Prévert is a jerk" | "Jacques Prévert est un con" | July 1992 | Les Lettres Françaises #22 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| "The Mirage by Jean-Claude Guiguet" | "Le Mirage de Jean-Claude Guiduet" | December 1992 | Les Lettres Françaises #27 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| "Approaches to distress" | "Approches du désarroi" | 1992 | Genius loci | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also in Rester vivant et autres textes, 1999 |
| "Staring into the distance: in praise of silent cinema" | "Le Regard perdu, éloge du cinéma muet" | May 1993 | Les Lettres Françaises #32 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| "Interview with Jean-Yves Jounnais and Christophe Duchâtelet" | "Entretien avec Jean-Yves Jounnais et Christophe Duchâtelet" | February 1995 | art press | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| "Art as peeling" | "L'art comme épluchage" | 1995 | Les Inrockuptibles #5 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| "Creative absurdity" | "L'absurdité créatrice" | 1995 | Les Inrockuptibles #13 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| lit. 'Interview with Valère Staraselski' | "Entretien avec Valère Staraselski" | 5 July 1996 | L'Humanité | Yes | No | No | |
| "The party" | "La fête" | 1996 | 20 Ans | No | Yes | Yes | Also in Rester vivant et autres textes, 1999 |
| "Time out" | "Temps morts" | February–March 1997 | Les Inrockuptibles #90–97 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also in Rester vivant et autres textes, 1999 |
| lit. 'Interview with Sabine Audrerie' | "Entretien avec Sabine Audrerie" | April 1997 | Encore #5 | Yes | No | No | |
| "Opera Bianca" | "Opera Bianca" | 1998 | Interventions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Installation at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Georges-Pompidou, 1997 |
| "Letter to Lakis Proguidis" | "Lettre à Lakis Proguidis" | 1997 | L'Atelier du roman #10 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| "The question of paedophilia" | "La question pédophile" | 1997 | L'Infini #59 | No | Yes | Yes | |
| "Humanity, the second stage" | "L'Humanité, second stade" | 1998 | SCUM Manifesto | No | Yes | Yes | Afterword to Mille et Une Nuits [fr]'s edition of the manifesto by Valerie Solanas |
| "Empty heavens" | "Cieux vides" | 1999 | Rester vivant et autres textes | No | Yes | Yes | |
| "I have a dream" | "Ich habe einen Traum" | 2 November 2000 | Die Zeit | No | Yes | Yes | Interview with Wolfgang Farkas [de]; in French translation as "J'ai un rêve" |
| "Neil Young" | "Neil Young" | 2000 | Dictionnaire du rock | No | Yes | Yes | |
| "Interview with Christian Authier" | "Entretien avec Christian Authier" | January 2002 | L'Opinion indépendante | No | Yes | Yes | |
| "Technical consolation" | "Consolation technique" | 2002 | Lanzarote et autres textes | No | Yes | Yes | |
| "Sky, earth, sun" | "Ciel, terre, soleil." | 2002 | Contes de campagne | No | Yes | Yes | Also in Lanzarote et autres textes, 2002 |
| "Leaving the twentieth century" | "Sortir du XXe siècle" | April 2002 | Nouvelle Revue Française #561 | No | Yes | Yes | Also in Lanzarote et autres textes, 2002 |
| "Philippe Muray in 2002" | "Philippe Muray en 2002" | 6 January 2003 | Le Figaro | No | Yes | Yes | Originally titled "L'homme de gauche est mal parti" |
| "Towards a semi-rehabilitation of the hick" | "Vers une semi-réhabilitation du beauf" | 2003 | online | No | Yes | Yes | |
| "Conservatism, a source of progress" | "Le conservatisme, source de progrès " | 8 November 2003 | Le Figaro | No | No | Yes | Also in Houellebecq, Cahiers de l'Herne, 2017 |
| "Prolegomena to positivism" | "Préliminaires au positivisme" | 2003 | Auguste Comte aujourdhui | No | Yes | Yes | Preface to a book by Michel Bourdeau |
| "I'm normal. A normal writer" | "Je suis normal. Écrivain normal." | 2004? | Unknown magazine | No | Yes | Yes | Houellebecq says it first appeared in a magazine but does not remember which one. Also in Des nouvelles du prix de Flore, 2004 |
| lit. 'Interview with Gilles Martin-Chauffier and Jérôme Béglé' | "Entretien avec Gilles Martin-Chauffier et Jérôme Béglé" | October 2006 | Paris Match #3000 | No | Yes | No | |
| "Soil cutting" | "Coupes de sol" | September 2008 | Artforum | No | Yes | Yes | |
| "I have read my whole life long" | "J'ai lu toute ma vie" | 2008 | ? | No | Yes | Yes | Written for the 50th anniversary of the publishing house J'ai lu [fr] |
| "The lost text" | "Le texte perdu" | 2012 | L'Imaginaire touristique | No | No | Yes | Preface to a book by Rachid Amirou [fr] |
| "Interview with Frédéric Beigbeder" | "Entretien avec Frédéric Beigbeder" | April 2014 | Lui #7 | No | No | Yes | |
| "A remedy for the exhaustion of being" | "Un remède à l'épuisement d'être" | 2014 | Musée national | No | No | Yes | Preface to a book by Marc Lathuillière |
| "Interview with Marin De Viry and Valérie Toranian" | "Entretien avec Marin de Viry et Valérie Toranian" | July 2015 | Revue des deux Mondes | No | No | Yes | |
| "Interview with Agathe Novak-Lechevalier" | "Entretien avec Agathe Novak-Lechevalier" | 2020 | Interventions 2020 | No | No | Yes | The interview took place during La Noche de los Libros [es] in Málaga, April 2017 |
| "Emmanuel Carrière and the problem of goodness" | "Emmanuel Carrère et le problème du bien" | 2018 | Emmanuel Carrère. Faire effraction dans le réel | No | No | Yes | |
| "Donald Trump is a good president" | "Donald Trump is a good president" | January 2019 | Harper's Magazine | No | No | Yes | The French title is "Donald Trump est un bon président". |
| "Conversation with Geoffrey Lejeune" | "Conversation avec Geoffroy Lejeune" | May 2019 | First Things | No | No | Yes | Also in Revue des deux Mondes, October 2019 |
| "A bit worse. A response to a few friends" | "En un peu pire." | 4 May 2020 | France Inter | No | No | Yes | Letter read on radio by Augustin Trapenard [fr] |
| "The Vincent Lambert affait should not have taken place" | "L'affaire Vincent Lambert n'aurait pas dû avoir lieu" | 2020 | Vincent Lambert, une mort exemplaire? | No | No | Yes | Preface to a book by Emmanuel Hirsch [fr] |

## Reception

Interventions received little attention when the first version was published in 1998. It appeared soon after Houellebecq's novels Whatever and Atomised had become subjects of international discussions and it was marketed as a key to the "real Houellebecq". Alexander Müller of literaturkritik.de [de] said it will disappoint people who approach it for that reason, comparing it negatively to Houellebecq's novels in its analyses of social processes. He praised its "aggressive style" and analytical abilities in some passages, but said it contains platitudes and "has little to offer other than the anti-Americanism that is widespread in France". Carole Sweeney says its texts have similar themes as Whatever and Houellebecq's earlier prose work Rester vivant [fr] (1991). These 1990s works address mechanistic and individualistic worldviews as existential threats and analyze how the logic of markets affects sexuality.
At the publication of Interventions 2, Sébastien Lapaque of Le Figaro described Houellebecq as one of few French writers who defy the zeitgeist by being "bad boys", together with Maurice G. Dantec, Richard Millet, Marc-Édouard Nabe, Christian Laborde [fr], Benoît Duteurtre and Gérard Oberlé. He said Interventions 2 elucidates both Houellebecq's novels and his "art of war". In L'Obs, Maud Granger Remy wrote that the title Interventions 2 is misleading, because it is not a sequel but an expansion of the existing Interventions, and the 17 added texts are also republications. She said the collection is incoherent and some texts suffer from being taken out of context, such as the afterword to the SCUM Manifesto, which she called beautiful but without relevance when it is not read together with the manifesto itself. Granger Remy criticized the publisher for recycling and relabelling material in a way that is dishonest and unworthy of Houellebecq, whose other books she described as "truly coherent, aesthetically and ideologically".
When Interventions 2020 was published, David Caviglioli and Grégoire Leménager of L'Obs used it to analyze Houellebecq's changing affinites over three decades. They group the texts into four periods: an early phase with "the communist press", the 1990s with Les Inrockuptibles, from the early 2000s with Le Figaro, and finally with Valeurs actuelles, which they call "Lepenist and Identitarian". David Sexton of The Spectator says the book's promotion of love and kindness makes Houellebecq appear "far from the depressive slut with an odd knack for prophecy that he is still eagerly reported to be in the British press".