Wine in Houellebecq: Cultural transgression or literary device?

Abstract

Michel Houellebecq has a reputation as a heavy drinker and many of his protagonists mirror this tendency. This article focuses specifically on wine, asking whether the consumption of wine, both in his writing and in representations of his life, constitutes a simple cultural transgression, mainly via the quantities imbibed, or whether in fact wine is used as a complex literary device, a symbolic marker of national identity, social status and interpersonal relations. Tracing the presence and analysing the significance of wine in Houellebecq’s seven novels published to date reveals new ways to decode and interpret the author’s work through the prism of this product and its rich semantic field.