{"id":67289,"date":"2014-02-26T19:28:15","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T00:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=67289"},"modified":"2014-02-27T08:26:37","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T13:26:37","slug":"a-curmudgeonly-pain-in-the-ass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/26\/a-curmudgeonly-pain-in-the-ass\/","title":{"rendered":"A Curmudgeonly Pain in the Ass"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Michel Houellebecq is fifty-eight today.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Prix-Goncourt_houellebecq.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-7564 aligncenter\" alt=\"Photograph by TK. \" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Prix-Goncourt_houellebecq.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve said that you are \u201can old Calvinist pain-in-the-ass.\u201d\u00a0What do you mean?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">HOUELLEBECQ<\/p>\n<p>I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us is unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death. This resembles the Calvinist notion of predestination, in which people are born saved or damned, without being able to do a thing about it. And I am a curmudgeonly pain in the ass because I refuse to diverge from the scientific method or to believe there is a truth beyond science.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014Michel Houllebecq, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/interviews\/6040\/the-art-of-fiction-no-206-michel-houellebecq\">the Art of Fiction No. 206<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michel Houellebecq is fifty-eight today. INTERVIEWER You\u2019ve said that you are \u201can old Calvinist pain-in-the-ass.\u201d\u00a0What do you mean? HOUELLEBECQ I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us is unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death. This resembles the Calvinist notion of predestination, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9064],"tags":[9158,1132,822,7782],"class_list":["post-67289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quote-unquote","tag-birthdays","tag-interviews","tag-michel-houellebecq","tag-the-art-of-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Curmudgeonly Pain in the Ass by Dan Piepenbring<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"February 26, 2014 \u2013 Michel Houellebecq is fifty-eight today. INTERVIEWER You\u2019ve said that you are \u201can old Calvinist pain-in-the-ass.\u201d\u00a0What do you mean? HOUELLEBECQ I tend to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/26\/a-curmudgeonly-pain-in-the-ass\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Curmudgeonly Pain in the Ass by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 26, 2014 \u2013 Michel Houellebecq is fifty-eight today. INTERVIEWER You\u2019ve said that you are \u201can old Calvinist pain-in-the-ass.\u201d\u00a0What do you mean? 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