La ripresa dei pensieri di Pascal sulla morte in M. Houellebecq e D.F. Wallace

This essay compares the different ways in which two famous contemporary novelists, M. Houellebecq and D.F. Wallace, use Pascal’s "Pensées" on death. The former, in "Anéantir", completely removes the fragments from the apologetic context in which they were originally placed by Pascal, thus terrifying the readers without edifying them. While the latter in "The Pale King", questioning our desire for eternity, draws the reader’s attention in greater detail to the paradoxical condition of man who, alone among all living beings, knows that he is dying, is aware that life has a limit, and yet aspires to transcend it. The American consumers, who spend a fortune on a gravestone so that some part of themselves will survive their total annihilation, are for Wallace the symbol of this paradoxical condition. In short, Houellebecq uses the fear of death as a narrative tool, while Wallace explores the complexity of human nature in the face of death, as Pascal does in his so-called «second anthropology».