Tag Archives: france

Tim Adams at the Guardian reviews Public Enemies by Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy.

As the correspondence unfolds, each man begins to identify both the sources of the rancour he excites and the defence against it. For Lévy, sanity always lies in narcissism: “In the face of assaults my ego is fireproof, shatterproof.” Houellebecq, meanwhile, claims at times to draw strength from the outrage he provokes, though generally he believes that “what I am going through is something similar to what medieval criminals did when they were pilloried… head imprisoned in a wooden frame… and any passer-by could slap him in the face, spit at him or worse”.