As described in the

Mr Houellebecq is a novelist who – in the words of the American writer John Updike – has a “thoroughgoing contempt for, and strident impatience with, humanity”. Mr Lévy is the bare-chested “new philosopher” and human rights champion whose modesty is as hard to locate as his shirt buttons.

The publishers say the book, which takes the form of an exchange of letters, allows the writers to express their views on a variety of subjects – including each other. Both authors are intellectual bruisers who revel in provocation.

This could be a lot of fun to read . . . And as John Thornhill speculates, could lead to a new genre:

The publishers’ concept is certainly intriguing, though, and could evolve into a whole genre of hate letters. Love letters, written by people revelling in how much they have in common, can be soppy and exclusive. Hate, on the other hand, is a far more democratic emotion: anyone can participate.

Hate letters could highlight the ways we differ from each other and tell us far more about the human condition. As Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Several film critics walked out of a showing of the first full-length film written and directed by Houellebecq at the 61st Locarno movie festival. Others giggled or made rude remarks.

Houellebecq, perhaps sensing a hostile audience or perhaps just unpredictable as usual, failed to turn up for a press conference. He also failed to say a few words to introduce his movie as festival etiquette demands.

His film “La Possibilité d’une île” (The Possibility of an Island) was dubbed by the Swiss newspaper Le Temps as “the possibility of a shipwreck”. The French newspaper Le Figaro said that the advance showing of the much-awaited movie, which opens in France in September, had “turned into a farce”. [. . .]

Most of the movie appears to have been filmed in a quarry (actually on location in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands). The costumes, characters and gadgets resemble those from a science fiction B movie from the 1950s or an early black and white episode of Doctor Who. The desultory action takes place against a sound-track mostly taken from Ravel’s “Bolero”.