“Literary critics have labeled Michel Houellebecq’s novels ‘vulgar,’ ‘pamphlet literature’ and ‘pornography;’ he has been accused of obscenity, racism, misogyny and islamophobia.” Why couldn’t I have read that book? Considering that one of his previous novels focused on a travel agency that sold prostitution packages to Thailand and that several others contain enough sex and violence to make the Marquis de Sade blush, I had a large bottle of hand sanitizer at the ready when reading Michel Houellebecq’s new novel, THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY. Sadly, what I really needed by the end was a six pack of Red Bull. At least from the view of these shores, the wave of controversy that surrounded THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY, which won the Prix Goncourt, France’s highest literary award, is rather perplexing. The novel follows artist Jed Martin as he reveals a new series of paintings after a ten year hiatus.  In order to get as much press attention as possible for his gallery opening, he commissions a certain Michel Houellebecq to write the essays for the catalog. The show’s a hit, there’s a gruesome murder and that’s about it. As a satire on art and society the novel reads like Bret Easton Ellis on Prozac. And even though Houellebecq follows in the footsteps of Martin Amis by casting himself as a major supporting character, the novel is devoid of any other post-modern narrative game playing, aside from a brief detour into Grand Guignol thriller territory that is swiftly brushed aside without a satisfying  pay-off.  To be fair, Houellebecq isn’t interested in narrative pay-off, or storytelling at all really, as he made abundantly clear in a 2010 Paris Review interview with Susannah Hunnewel: “You might get the impression that I have a mild contempt for...