Here’s my book review of In the Presence of Schopenhauer by French prize-winning novelist Michel Houellebecq. In this novella-length essay, the author describes his fascination with 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

The Frogs is a sculpture by Sergio Bustamante. Can you guess why it reminds me of this book?

Houellebecq asserts that encountering Schopenhauer’s philosophy changed his outlook on life fundamentally. The author was in his mid-twenties. It was as if he’d met a perverse, cranky old man whom he could regard as a father figure – an understanding mentor who could forgive the author for being such a curmudgeon himself.

In her preface to the paperback, critic Agathe Novak-Lechavalier describes the author’s outlook this way:

Schopenhauer opened Houellebecq’s eyes and taught him to contemplate the world as it is in itself – as entirely driven by a blind and endless ‘will to live’ which is the essence of all things, from inert matter to men, via plants and animals. In Schopenhauer, this ‘will’, foreign to the principle of reason, is the basis of the absurd and tragic character of all existence, whose sufferings are at once inevitable (because ‘all willing proceeds from need and thus from deprivation, and thus from suffering’) and devoid of any justification. It also explains the author’s legendary pessimism.

“In other words,” the philosopher might have said to the author, “don’t feel bad about being such a cynic. Michel. Because the only sense you can make of the world is what you perceive through your senses, your opinion is the only one that matters!”

In my posts, I’ve included book reviews of Houllebecq’s novels The Map and the Territory and Submission. I’ve also read Whatever and Serotonin – all before I picked up this little book of admiration for Schopenhauer.

Well, finally, this essay explains a lot. I’ve found Houllebecq’s narrative points of view – whether expressed in the first or the third person – as solipsistic – that is, hopelessly self-centered to the point of self-obsession. His plots often seem pointless. He never explains. It’s as if he has no idea why he wrote the story.

I’d say this point of view agrees not only with Schopenhauer but also with the later French existentialists Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as with some contemporary behaviorists. “The universe is empty and meaningless,” they seem to say. “Make of it what you will.”

Some say this is good news, Recently, I heard physicist Brian Cox say he thought the mission of the human race is to make meaning.

I wonder.

Evan Wycliff is an amateur sleuth, the main character of my mysteries Preacher Finds a Corpse, Preacher Fakes a Miracle, and Preacher Raises the Dead. Amateur sleuth is a well-established subgenre of mystery, but stories about clergymen who investigate crimes are perhaps a sub-subgenre. As a reader myself, my favorites of these are the Rabbi Ben mysteries by Marvin J. Wolf, including A Scribe Dies in Brooklyn.

Now, putting on my writer hat, I will admit that casting an amateur sleuth in the role of investigator is one of the easier choices. If the main character were a law-enforcement official, the technical challenges for the author are much more restrictive. Those plots fall into the category of police procedural. The author must understand the protocols of criminal investigations, including crime-scene surveys and forensic analysis.

But protagonists who are amateurs needn’t follow the rules – especially because they are likely to be ignorant of them and – what’s more – they have no business poking their noses where they don’t belong.

In the Preacher novels, it isn’t Evan’s intention to do any of this. In the first book, Preacher Finds a Corpse, he happens on the body of his best friend in a cornfield. Bob Taggart is dead – apparently by suicide, which is also obvious to the cops and to the coroner. But Evan wonders – even if no one else pulled the trigger – did someone drive Bob to do it? Wouldn’t that be a sin – if not a crime?

Evan’s curse – or his blessing – is his curious mind. And, like good investigators, professional or not, he’s both a data-driller and a close observer. At the outset of the series, Evan gets only part-time gigs – as a guest preacher at the local Baptist church and as a skip tracer (bill collector) for the town’s car dealership.

And because he has some success finding the truth, false rumors circulate in this southern Missouri farm community that Evan is a faith healer. His growing reputation attracts people who need help – not just spiritual guidance but also resolutions to personal crises that no one else in town seems to have any interest in solving.

So – one might ask – are the Evan Wycliff mysteries Christian fiction? I’d think not – my sense of that genre is it’s intended to provide inspiration – to offer answers to questions.

In Evan’s world, there are always more questions than answers.