Long Live The King, Cont'd

So, for those of you keeping score at home, I promised to re-review Iggy Pop’s Préliminaires after reading Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island, the book that he claims inspired the music on the album. Well, I finished it this afternoon and feel ready to finish my review.

In many ways, I desperately want to write a review of the book more than the album. Let me assure you, in no uncertain terms, that I absolutely loved this book. Houellebecq’s tale of an aging comedian struggling to come to terms with a world that shamelessly values youth above all else resonated with me in a way that very few books ever have. At once incredibly depressing and strangely hopeful, I am incredibly glad I read this book. However, as I’ve established in the past, I am by no means qualified to be a literary critic, so I won’t try. All I can say on the subject is that I strongly recommend this book, especially if you enjoy the work of authors like Orwell and Heller (be warned, though, of many graphic depictions of sex).

As for Iggy’s Préliminaires, reading The Possibility of an Island has only given me a greater appreciation of what my favorite stooge has accomplished with his new album this year. Préliminaires is not explicitly “about” the plot of the novel, which is, in most ways, a very good thing. A distillation of the book, simplified into ten songs, would have been pretty damn awful. Instead, what Iggy manages to do is recreate the general tone and mood of the album, applying that voice to his own life and problems. The prevailing theme of the book is the struggle people face, especially in social and sexual terms, as the leave their youth and begin to fall apart with age. I can completely understand how Iggy, who is not by any stretch of the imagination a young man anymore, could relate to the character of Daniel in the book.

Of course, Iggy was never a piercing social commentator/ comedian like Daniel, but the similarities are too great to be ignored. Just like Daniel, Iggy was an entertainer who held audiences’ attention through a sense of danger. Both lived reckless lives in their younger days, before realizing they needed to slow down when they couldn’t keep up with the world they were used to. It’s a compelling tale, to be sure. While these themes are not explicitly addressed in Préliminaires, the resigned tone of the album suits the book so incredibly well. The chunk of text taken from the book and set to music for the semi-closing “A Machine For Loving” is one of the most moving and emotional segments of the book and gives perfect closure to the album, despite the fact that it’s taken from the middle of the book. Iggy has found a way to create a chunk of music inspired by a great novel while still making it completely his own. Thus, I feel Iggy Pop’s Préliminaires deserves all five of the pretzels I originally gave it.