Interesting fact about his DOB

>"Houellebecq was not born in 1958, contrary to the date which he himself helped to spread, but two years earlier. [...] This persistence in concealing his age is a fantasy that many of his close friends or former close friends interviewed within the framework of this work, were unaware. [...] Françoise Hardy asks him for his date of birth in order to to prepare one's astrological chart for the May 1999 issue of the magazine. "That's when a very strange episode occurred," he recounts the singer. He gave me two, a bit like in his book The Particles, where its two heroes, Michel and Bruno, were born in two years apart"

On adopting the Houellebecq surname

>"Michel Thomas saw himself as someone who, while still young, had been abandoned to its fate; a fate that, after years of uncertainty, hesitation, relative nonchalance, uncertainty, doubt And, at times, out of genuine despair, he took matters into his own hands. He forged a new identity for herself, adopting her grandmother's name Houellebecq, a name from the north of uncertain origin which had spread from the coasts of Flanders as far as the peninsula of the English Channel. Near Cherbourg and Surtainville, a fishing village swept by every storm. "Wellbecq", if we stick to strict phonetics, is a slap like a sail in the open sea wind that Michel chose for cast off the moorings and carve its own path with originality and a freedom not seen in literature for decades."

His mother

>"She enrolled in physics, chemistry, and biology, the dominant subjects of her the first five years of medical studies from which she graduated top of her class in externship and second in internship. With her sharp mind, Janine Ceccaldi is a woman of character. who, as a teenager, read Dostoevsky with passion. The writer Russia left such a mark on her that, almost eighty years old, she knows still memorizing entire passages from Crime and Punishment, The Karamazov brothers, The Possessed, a novel dear to his son's heart, the one he read the most, along with Thomas's The Magic Mountain Mann. Activist in the illegal Algerian Communist Youth In the early 1940s, she associated with Maurice Audin and Henri Alleg, two ardent supporters of independence who will pay for it dearly."
"

His father

>"The son of proletarians, who says he is "proud to be one," rails against the bourgeoisie ready to take up arms. René Georges Thomas, Michel's father, left school at thirteen years to become a pastry apprentice at Labrousse in Cherbourg, his hometown. [...] After having been an apprentice fitter, Fitter, electrician, the low-paying jobs keep coming: grocer in the suburbs of Paris, horticulturist in Bagneux, warehouse worker to the railways, truck driver in Tignes. [...] He becomes a high mountain guide and tests himself against the rock formations from all over the world. [...] Janine leaves for Réunion in as a doctor at an anti-tuberculosis dispensary in Saint- Pierre. René joined her a few months later"

Being raised by his grandparents in Algeria

>"He is therefore entrusted to Henriette while his parents carry out their work. their journey in Africa, then after their separation, to Grandparents Ceccaldi. Having returned to Réunion, the mother settled down as a general practitioner in Saint-Paul. “Five hours from morning-seven o'clock in the evening. With one or two calls per night, this was certainly not the best condition for raising a [child]" [...] "Especially without a father," the mother explained. In Algiers, Michel lives in the beautiful apartment he describes in Elementary Particles until the end of summer 1961. When there Grandpa Ceccaldi, who is retired, arrives. devotes all his time."

Child genius

>"The child reveals himself intellectually. precocious. At three years old, he could read, and at four, he recounted the conquest from Mexico as if he had been part of Cortés' troops. In spelling, he writes "ornithorynque" without error, which It impresses the older generation. At the private Leperlier school in an upscale neighborhood, His teachers are proud of him. His knowledge annoys his little ones. playmates he meets again in the park. [...] Mother’s verdict: “A mentally gifted child, a "Emotionally underdeveloped.""

Parents' divorce

>"In September 1960, Janine Thomas informed her husband that she is expecting a child by another man. He is filing for divorce. was pronounced on October 7 in Albertville, the town where they had married. Michel is only four and a half years old. "I had agreed to to grant the divorce on the grounds of my exclusive fault and grievances, and that custody the child should be entrusted to the father, the mother reports."

Being sent to live with his grandmother in France

>"In Michel's popular version, Henriette took up all the space. "She was a factory worker, rather communist at heart, and was one of those people who gave themselves completely to others, it was a happy interlude in my life [...] I rode my bike, I read Pif and Tout l'Univers. In class, I was first everywhere"

Child genius II

>"I played along, but I was viewed rather favorably because I let others copy me. His father corrects him: “At the primary school in Dicy, it’s where the problems started. The children weren't kind. He never complained. He was so much smarter. "They, the small farmers, were jealous of him." Michel successfully passed the primary school certificate in Villefranche, near Dicy. "That's where he blew my mind," the father still marvels."

>>25044337
Gifted maybe but not a child prodigy. A genius is someone like Mozart who was writing keyboard compositions at five and was touring Europe as an extraordinary child at his age.

Impact of parents' divorce

>"Everyone loves him in the family and admires his prodigious knowledge. Nevertheless, Michel withdrew into himself. Taciturn, he escapes into books, builds his own world, built a dam against absence. The mother's warmth... Missing. For the kiss at bedtime. For the a lock of hair that is lifted, a sheet that is pulled back, a forehead that is caressed. Simply to feel secure. Despite the years that have passed, He will never succeed in overcoming the emotional deprivation of childhood. nor will it succeed in overcoming the atrophy caused by this heartbreak."

>>25044234
I found it surprising that he has a son, he barely ever seems to mention that or talk about it.