Who is the top conservative novelist today? One name that comes to mind is Michel Houellebecq, recently included by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on the syllabus for his Yale University class on conservatism. And while Houellebecq's books offer interesting ideas on metaphysics, Islam in Europe, and how the market impacts our love lives, if the right is going to allow nihilistic novels of sexual depravity into its canon, there is a stronger author out there.
Cormac McCarthy is the greatest living novelist. It's actually strange that he and Houellebecq aren't compared more often since both write from a similar worldview about similar topics. Neither is necessarily conservative but both represent well the “cultural pessimism” portion of the Right. And only by grasping why McCarthy is the superior writer can we see the proper way this slice of conservatism should be integrated into the larger canon.
Conservative interest in Houellebecq stems from his criticisms of European liberalism, particularly his ideas on social isolation, the sexual revolution, and Islam. These are most clearly articulated in his novels The Elementary Particlesand Submission. Houellebecq traces Europe's cultural ennui to empiricist metaphysics that reduce the world to matter. He describes the sexual revolution of the '60s and Europe's recent embrace of Islam as symptoms of this disease.
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