Rural Revolt: The Scale Problem in Houellebecq and Norris

Abstract:This article discusses the implications of farmers' insurrections suppressed by state power in Michel Houellebecq's Sérotonine (2019) and Frank Norris's The Octopus (1901). In both cases, the disparity in scale between the farmers' organization and the larger forces set against them (the European Union and the French police, for Houellebecq; the railroad trust and U.S. marshals, for Norris) not only dictates the narrative outcome but also animates a set of questions around globalization, masculinity, the sociological meaning of place, and the relationship between the natural and mechanized worlds. Both novels' conclusions can be read as a surrender to scale, although the two authors' perspectives treat that surrender with ostensibly opposed reactions.