Sérotonine
One of the first 200 copies on vélin Rivoli Arjowiggins (no. 24).
Photograph mounted at front.
Sérotonine is a treatise on decline, addressing the decline of the West: of the European Union, of France, of God. The hero — or anti-hero —, Florent-Claude Labrouste, is a 46-year-old agricultural engineer employed by the Ministry of Agriculture, in a relationship with a 26-year-old Japanese woman, who is dying “of sorrow” and owes his survival to a drug, Captorix, which stimulates the production of serotonin, a “hormone linked to self-esteem,” which he defines in the opening line: “It is a small white tablet, oval, scored.”
He decides to disappear. First in a Mercure hotel near Place d’Italie, then in Lower Normandy, “an abandoned territory, populated by suicidal farmers condemned by Brussels’ European policy.”
Houellebecq, the chronicler of contemporary man’s solitude, keeps hammering the same nail, obstinately, even at the cost of simplification, admitting as much: “yes, of course I’m simplifying, but one has to simplify or one gets nowhere.” Houellebecq thus reveals his intent: “Had we been in a romantic comedy, I would have done this […]. Had we been in a porn film, what followed would have been even more predictable […]. We were in reality, and so I went home.” A relentless and disillusioned machine.
A superb binding by Renaud Vernier in metallic calf, titled by Claude Ribal.