Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I have never read anything by Renan and it isn't a project I'm likely to launch for myself any time soon. So I can only know what the fuss was about second or third hand. Here is a passage referencing Renan in William James' VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. James is discussing the I-don't-care or nothing-matters-anyway state of mind. He says that the phrase "all is vanity" is "the relieving word in all difficult crises for this mode of thought, which that exquisite genius Renan took pleasure, in his later years of sweet decay, in putting into coquettishly sacrilegious forms which remain to us as excellent expressions of the 'all is vanity' state of mind." I'd be curious to know if any reader knows Renan well enough to recognize this description as apt or to quarrel with it as not.

Michel Houellebecq's new book, SUBMISSION, seems to have caused a good deal of stir in France, and is now producing much the same effect in the United States. Houellebecq is a well-known novelist, although as is surely the case with many important people, places, things, and ideas this is the first mention of him in this or any of my blogs. His previous novels include WHATEVER (1994), THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES (1998), PLATFORM (2001), and THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY (2010). THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, or in French " Les Particules élémentaires," was first translated into English for the UK market as ATOMISED, then re-translated for the US market with the more literal translation of the title I've provided here.  It may have been his most successful novel thus far. The new book, though, concerns Islam. At least on its face. It postulates a near future in which an Islamicist political party wins a French national election and forms a government.  Give...