I've Read the New Houllebecq...

... and it is good. For those who have been turned off by his unsubtle mixture of porn and polemic, those aspects are muted, even almost absent from The Map and the Territory. While this certainly makes the novel appear more mature, and a quick browsing of critical reviews confirms that the novel is being read in this way, this impression exists only in the context of a world where maturity is seen as resignation to a life where all that a human can achieve is all that can be achieved by a human. The novel is not so much anti-political as it is despairing of a society where politics is impossible as long as this vision of maturity persists.