FORGET SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, Betty Friedan, and Naomi Wolff. Descartes gave us all that we needed to claim gender equality. Historians rarely remember it this way, but women’s rights were dramatically (if hypothetically) advanced when, on November 19th 1619, ...

"On May 6th, a new breed of digital nightingale chirped all night, their echoes sketching a vast and cozy nest all over France."...

One can only wonder what it would have been had Houellebecq actually believed in the novel as an art form....