I read this as a satire on the etiolation and ennui of the French (European?) political and intellectual classes. Something about it is distasteful to me though---partly because it seems Houellebecq is being half-serious about what he’s satirizing, and partly because what he is satirizing about isn’t really funny. This is especially true in how he treats women in the book. That Francois is excited by the prospect of having many wives who can cater to his every need---are we supposed to read that as an indictment of men in a particular class, that their refinement hides the truth of their boorishness? Or is Houellebecq presenting an honest perspective that genuinely excites him? The fact that it’s hard to tell is a problem. Even if the former is the case, it doesn’t ring true, it’s so broad a caricature that it doesn’t square with the seriousness and detail of how Francois is otherwise depicted (cf. his halfway religious awakening in Rocamadour).
It is rather scary to read a book published in 2015 get a lot of the “center will not hold” political agita of the subsequent years eerily correct.
From Ross Douthat:
The overt political teaching of “Submission” is that Europe is dying from the disease called liberalism, that it can be saved only by a return of hierarchy and patriarchy and patriotism and religion and probably some kind of monarchy as well, but that religion itself is primarily an instrumental good and so the point is to find a faith that actually convinces and inspires and works (and that’s, well, a little manly), and on that front European Christianity and particularly Roman Catholicism is basically a dead letter so the future might as well belong to Islam instead.