Michel Houellebecq - Submission

Before I delivered my acceptance speech (by tradition, these were very brief), I’d certainly give a last thought to Myriam. She’d live her own life, I knew, in circumstances much more difficult than mine. I sincerely hoped she would have a happy life — though that struck me as unlikely.

The cocktail party would be festive, and would last into the night.

A few months later there would be new classes and new students — pretty, veiled, shy. I don’t know how students find out which teachers are famous, but they always, inevitably, did, and I didn’t think things could be so different now. Each of these girls, no matter how pretty, would be happy and proud if I chose her, and would feel honoured to share my bed. They would be worthy of love; and I, for my part, would come to love them.

Rather like my father a few years before, I’d be given another chance; and it would be the chance at a second life, with very little connection to the old one.

I would have nothing to mourn.

I did not attend university, and everything I know about academic life I learned from Agathe Novak-Lechevalier, maître de conférences at the University of Paris X-Nanterre. If the backdrop to these inventions of mine is at all credible, it is entirely thanks to her.