Review of Michel Houellebecq's "Serotonin"

Serotonin is the second novel I have read by Michel Houellebecq. The first, Soumission, perfectly demonstrated his penchant for telling controversial and outrageous stories, in that case Islam’s gradual and largely peaceful conquest of France. Serotonin continues this provocative approach with the story of Florent, a 46 year-old man who finds that he has reached middle age with little to show for it other than a series of failed relationships and a rather dull job at the ministry of agriculture. Like many people in developed countries who find themselves in similar situations, Florent tries to resolve his malaise with anti-depressants which artificially produce the hormone Serotonin (hence the book’s title). Although they help him function in the sense that after taking them he can get out of bed, eat breakfast and shower, they do not resolve his existential crisis. The underlying meaning of the book is that this medicalization of despair is ultimately a symptom of a much deeper disease, namely civilizational decadence and decline induced by social and economic liberalism. Of course, Houellebecq does not explicitly state this thesis; rather it is implicit in the story and particularly the characters, including Florent’s friend Aymeric, a farmer who is harmed by free trade and decides to revolt, and for which he pays the ultimate price. Although the text is ultimately full front assault on liberalism, it does not provide a viable alternative to this political order; yet there are hints in the text that Houellebecq’s ideal society is Sparta.

The great polemicist

 Frustration with Sexual Freedom

The book begins when Florent is in his umpteenth relationship, this time with Yuzu, a Japanese woman who, at 26 years-old, is two decades younger than him. Like many foreigners in Paris she comes from a well-off family who is able to finance her studies and living expenses abroad. She is attractive, worldly, educated, and displays the deference and respectfulness inculcated by Japan’s traditional culture. Many middle aged European men might be delighted to have a girlfriend like Yuzu, and Florent’s recounting the relationship suggests that it was initially enjoyable, particularly during the phase when sexual attraction is most intense. By the time the reader encounters them, they already stopped frequently sleeping together, and the relationship continues through inertia and economic necessity rather than love and commitment. Things go downhill one day when Florent opens her email account and finds that she is an amateur porn actress; in one of those typical Houellebecq scenes which shock and provoke the reader, Florent downloads some of the videos of her getting gangbanged and having sex with animals (a dog, to be precise). These videos are described in detail and leave an indelible mark on the incredulous reader.

At this point Florent is already out of love with Yuzu, but he is still upset about the betrayal, particularly because he finds that the videos were filmed the year before, that is, the period when he thought that the relationship was at its peak. He ponders how he should respond and decides to murder her. When Yuzu returns, he will propose that they have a few drinks, and when she is drunk he will throw her out of the window from their 30^thfloor apartment. He changes his mind only because he is afraid of going to jail and being raped by other inmates (not, um, because of the immorality of murder). Plan B is to leave everything—Yuzu, their apartment, his job—and disappear while trying to start a new life.

Florent inherited his parents’ estate, and this allows him to live without working. He finds a cheap motel and settles in, but his depression has worsened. Not only is he sad and pessimistic all the time, he has difficulty getting out of bed and showering. He visits a doctor who prescribes Captorix, the latest generation of anti-depressants, which help him function, but at the cost of losing all sexual desire or even the capacity to have an erection. 

As the story proceeds, the message becomes clear: it is society that is sick, and not depressed people. The target—unsurprisingly from Houellebecq—is liberalism (understood philosophically). But unlike Marxists, who only attack economic liberalism, or conservatives, who critique the social kind, his target is the whole package of individual freedoms which characterize contemporary society.  His frustration with sexual liberalism becomes evident when Florent reminisces about his past and introduces the reader to his series of failed relationships. One in particular is Clair, and he decides to reconnect with her after his break-up with Yuzu. They meet for dinner, and he discovers that she is in a similar situation as him—single and frustrated after having many failed relationships, and in a job she does not like. Even worse, he finds that she is profoundly self-absorbed. There is no real conversation during their meal, rather there is a monologue as Clair endlessly discusses her problems while not showing any interest in Florent’s life. A few bottles of wine nonetheless loosens them up and they go home together, but Florent is on anti-depressants which prevent him from having an erection, despite her best efforts to stimulate him. He tells her about the medication, and this is when, for the first time that evening, she actually becomes curious about his life.

Only one of his girlfriends gave him genuine happiness. She was not French, (perhaps unsurprisingly, from Houellebecq’s perspective), she was a Dane, and they met at Cite Universitaire, a place where non-nationals mingle and develop relationships. It was a period in their lives when optimism about the future reigned supreme, and both seemed destined for promising and fulfilling careers—she as a veterinarian, and he an engineer for the agricultural sector. They lived together and spent Christmas with each other’s respective families. This happy union lasted five years, and ended because Florent cheated on her. Even worse was that, from Florent’s perspective, the betrayal was rather meaningless. There was no emotion involved, and it occurred with someone who was much less attractive than Camille, while he was drunk and out with friends; the other woman happened to be there, and alcohol and a bit of sexual desire did the rest.

Perhaps countless relationships end this way, but in this case it occurred with the only woman who genuinely made Florent happy and with whom he could envisage spending his entire life. By the time the reader learns about Camille, Florent is in the pit of despair mentioned above, and he decides to look for her. He discovers her veterinarian office and stalks her, waiting for that perfect moment to make an encounter. But his plans for their getting together again are disrupted when he sees her with a small child, meaning her commitment to her son may compromise her devotion to Florent. At this point, Florent descends into madness: he plans to kill the baby, and rationalizes it by reminding the reader that males in other species frequently kill another’s offspring when mating. Why can’t humans do the same? Happily, he comes to his senses at the last minute and fails to carry it out.

Victims of Free Trade

Aymeric was Florent’s friend during their university years. He is of aristocratic lineage—one of his ancestors fought with Richard Lionheart during the attempt to recapture Jerusalem—and inherited land that for centuries was transmitted to each generation. After his studies, Aymeric married someone from his social class, and they had two children. They make use of his inherited land to produce goods for the agricultural sector, meaning his interests are now tied with those in the rural and peripheral areas of the country.

Florent decides to visit him, and by then Aymeric is in bad shape. His glamorous wife met a dashing pianist and moved to London with him, bringing their two children along. This separation is devastating, and Aymeric deals with it by consuming copious amounts of alcohol and marijuana. Meanwhile, cheaper products from poorer competitors, like Ireland, Poland, and India, cause economic pain to him and his employees. Protectionist barriers are slowly being removed, and hence farmers are left to themselves to respond what they perceive to be unfair competition. Serotonin emphasizes the human and social side of these economic developments—the need to give up heating the house in order to reduce daily expenses, family conflicts, the loss of dignity created by unemployment. Aymeric needs to find other ways to raise money to live, and decides to capitalize off intra-European tourism. One of his guests, Florent discovers, is a German pedophile who travels to France to satisfy his lust for little girls. Sensitive readers will be shocked by the scene when Florent discovers the videos of a 12 year-old girl performing fallatio on a middle-aged German tourist, in part because the reader knows that these things actually occur in the real world.

Aymeric’s attempt to find alternative sources of revenue is insufficient, and his business is rapidly deteriorating. The same is true for others in his community who work in the same sector. They meet and engage in "consciousness raising" and discover their shared pain, and its source, namely, the French state which has sacrificed the interests of farmers on the altar of free trade and European integration. The farmers decide to revolt, and these scenes solidify Houellebecq’s reputation for having the ability to capture the nation’s pulse and predict the direction in which it is going: the yellow vest protests, a revolt of the periphery against the elites in Paris, began just after Serotonin was released. Parallels are clearly there, particularly the class-based nature of the protesters, who come from those groups which have experienced economic decline and economic insecurity. Targets are also the same: free trade, European integration, and the classes which benefit from these economic developments. 

Back to the farmers’ revolt in Serotonin: the confrontation turns violent, in part because of the despair of the farmers. Florent witnesses the protests and sees Aymeric’s face up close; he notices that Aymeric, for the first time in many years, seems happy. One reason may be that he is taking action rather than submitting to his distress. He also has very little to lose at this point—he has lost his wife and children, and is near bankruptcy; paradoxically, this gives him the freedom to take more risk, including risking his life during the faceoff with the French security forces. Readers expecting a happy ending, such as the protests effectively changing the direction of French politics, will be disappointed: Aymeric and many of his comrades die in a firefight with the police.

If not liberalism, than what?

Florent’s series of failed relationships leads to a major depression, and he deals with his despair by taking anti-depressants. As the book proceeds it becomes clear that their widespread use is a symptom of wider disease that is civilizational in character, namely, sexual freedom, the general lack of commitment and the desire for individual pleasure. Each failed relationship adds another layer of frustration, which accumulates and encrusts itself like the detritus slowly covering a barren landscape. Some are lucky to find stability, love, and commitment, but many end up middle aged and disillusioned. And not even the seemingly privileged classes are immune to these dynamics, as demonstrated by Aymeric; his aristocratic lineage did not protect him from the devastation of losing his wife and children. The latter’s despair was worse than Florent’s because he was also the victim of economic liberalism, in this case, free trade and European integration, which financially ruined him. Rather than turning to anti-depressants, Aymeric used alcohol and drugs, and only when he revolted did he once again have a glimpse of the happiness that was quickly extinguished by the repressive French state.

Liberals (in the philosophical sense) will be aghast at this thesis that social and economic freedom lead to disappointment and despair, and will critique Houellebecq for focusing only on the costs and not the benefits. For every Aymeric, there is perhaps a Claude or a Jean who has benefited from the new economy—perhaps by creating a successful start-up which caters to the needs of the tourist industry. Economic change is a fact of life, they say, and it is best to profit from it rather than complain. It would seem, however, that these views resonate in the big cities, like Paris (or London), which have been the main beneficiaries of the liberal order. The widespread popularity of Houellebecq’s books suggest that their views do not prevail.

What is the alternative? On this, Serotonin is much less clear. There are sections which give some hints, for example, when he says that traditional parties ignored the plight of French farmers, and only the French Communists and the Rassemblement National were sympathetic to their plight. But these two ideologies—Marxism and ethnic nationalism—are logically incoherent, and thus reconciling them is not plausible. There seems to be implicit nostalgia for a pre-liberal past, but which one? My reading of Serotonin is that Houellebecq’s ideal society was Sparta: martial, unified, and duty-based; where risk, danger, and heroism were valued; and where social action was determined by the good of the collective not the freedom of the individual (this is unsurprising, since another French critic of liberalism, Rousseau, essentially endorsed the same vision). If Houellebecq’s prescience is confirmed by future events, the end of liberalism may mean the return to Sparta, and future historians may identify him as one of the intellectuals who predicted or ushered in these fundamental changes.