A bad boy's return

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PLATFORM

By Michel Houellebecq

Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

Knopf, $25, 255 pages

REVIEWED BY STEPHEN GOODE

French literature has had its share of bad boy poets and writers -- Villon and Rabelais in centuries past and more recently Rimbaud and Celine. Now there is Michel Houellebecq whose second novel, "The Elementary Particles," began earning its author fame and notoriety five years ago when it first appeared in French.

It has now come out in several languages. Part of the book's fame sprang from it's sexual explicitness. At times -- and those times are frequent -- "The Elementary Particles" is indistinguishable from pornography. But the novel's notoriety also derived from its bleakness.