Yet just as he did in The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq (the author) uses narrative strategies he himself identified in H.P. Lovecraft’s writing in H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Like Lovecraft, the narrative voice is plain and scientific, as if in a report by an expedition member to his society’s journal, couched in objective terms so as to impart a sense of authority. This necessarily means almost everything that happens is summarized, not shown. But by quietly sliding right into the consciousness of the characters the narrative suddenly transforms into a detailed psychological novel, with something of the heft and feel of Sartre or Camus, whom he’s also been widely compared to.

The Map and the Territory is the first major Luigi Ghirri retrospective to go on show outside the artist’s native Italy. The focus of the exhibition rests on the 1970s, a key period in the expansion of the suburbs and the service economy, the emergence of conceptual art and the mainstreaming of Pop and its strategies of appropriation. Framed inside this context, Ghirri, who used tools and processes from amateur photography — a small Canon camera, colour film – began to photograph the suburbs of Modena, thus creating an unmatched body of work inside the prevalent art photography of the time. Historian of religion Jonathan Z. Smith concluded his eponymous essay collection, Map is not Territory with a rejoinder to scholars that echoes the Borgesian analysis (1978, p.309): The Map and the Territory is the story of an artist, Jed Martin, and his family and lovers and friends, the arc of his entire history rendered with sharp humor and powerful compassion. His earliest photographs, of countless industrial objects, were followed by a surprisingly successful series featuring Michelin road maps, which also happened to bring him the love of his life, Olga, a beautiful Russian working—for a time—in Paris. But global fame and fortune arrive when he turns to painting and produces a host of portraits that capture a wide range of professions, from the commonplace (the owner of a local bar) to the autobiographical (his father, an accomplished architect) and from the celebrated ( Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology) to the literary (a writer named Houellebecq, with whom he develops an unusually close relationship). One of the most important facts about Michel Houellebecq -- usually overlooked in favour of his nihilism, alleged racism and other attention-seeking provocations -- is that he is a first-rate prose stylist. This is not quite enough, however, to make him a good novelist. (...) The Map and the Territory is part mystery thriller and part satire, set in the near-future. It presents a vision of contemporary French society as a cross between a reality show and Third World dystopia. (...) (T)he plot is ludicrous, teasing and entertaining in roughly equal measure." - Andrew Hussey, Literary Review

About the Author

WHEW! This was a challenging and arduous read reminiscent of a college text book. Mr. Greenspan did a wonderfully thorough job of making simple concepts extremely complex. But then again, Mr. Greenspan is considered by many to be the father of Fedspeak, “intentionally wordy, vague and ambiguous statements used to prevent financial markets from overreacting to the Federal Reserve chairman's remarks.” The Map and the Territory can be boiled down to one essential question: is Alan Greenspan "Bayesian," and if so, how does the new data of the 2008 crisis affect his prior assumptions? As an Objectivist, I share much of the same framework and agree with a good portion of the information presented within the text - but unlike Greenspan, I have learned much from the 2008 collapse that shows the shape of his missing piece to be simple: human fraud enabled by the deregulatory framework that has blossomed at the Federal Reserve since Greenspan's term of office began in 1987. Houellebecq, the one outside the book I’m not sure about the one inside the book, usually brings up the themes of the politics of sex and the way lust motivates all aspects of our lives, but in this book he just settles for some philosophical musings on prostitutes. This is the third book I’ve read by him and this is the book he spends the least amount of time talking about sex… libido slowing down Mr. Houellebecq?

The idea of Too Big To Fail, spawned during the financial crisis of 2007–2008, and the resultant governmental bailouts of GM, Chrysler, AIG and the like, turned these companies into de facto quasi-governmental, sovereign entities that diminished their competitiveness and actually impaired smaller banks and corporations who did not receive government aid. While preparing for an exhibition of his work, Jed realizes he hasn’t “said a word for almost a month, except the ‘No’ he repeated every day to the cashier (rarely the same one, it has to be said) who asked him if he had the Club Casino loyalty card.” Lichfield, John (8 September 2010). "I stole from Wikipedia but it's not plagiarism, says Houellebecq". The Independent. UK. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022.

Here, quite far in, the novel switches from its focus on Jed to the police investigation, which sputters on for a while before being solved completely by accident; yes, Houellebecq is far too lazy an author to ever seriously try his hand at crime fiction (predictably, too, the one crime author that's recommended here is atmospheric Mygale-author Thierry Jonquet). First, let me say that I greatly enjoyed "The Age of Turbulence." It was better than I had expected, mixing Alan Greenspan's personal story with an interesting finance story. I gave it five stars, and consider it one of the best books I have read in the genre.