Cogito Ergo Defungo

Even though I hardly ever quit a book once I have started it - and by started it I mean once I have read beyond the first twenty or so pages - I quit Houllebecq's The Elementary Particles. I had been wanting to read this book for a while, or any of his books really, so I borrowed a copy from a friend and set to reading.
I was aware going into it that Houllebecq had somehow garnered a reputation for being misogynistic and a bit too frank with regard to sex, whatever that means. Since reading books is a bit like going to med school (you are going to have to get a look at some naked bodies at some point), I have a pretty high tolerance for subject matter that the majority of the bible-toting world might normally find offensive. After reading 100 pages of The Elementary Particles, I have to say, I never found out quite what the fuss was about. There wasn't anything in the book that seemed beyond redemption.
I did, however, see what the fuss should have been about: the language in the book works in outright defiance of itself. The narrative interrupts itself. These interruptions are in the form of scientific tangent that's not even cool in the way that Pynchon is tangentially scientific but more in the way that Bush is tangentially scientific (yeah, grossly undereducated in research as well as presentation), or an extended passage about the spread of "free love" in the 60s in France (a subject that doesn't really need any elucidation in a novel that only literary people and French people are going to read). Then there are the short little interjections of sexual-ish language that might mostly be heard among a car of fifteen year old boys after football practice.
Of course, there is nothing really wrong with this except for that Houllebecq is a decent stylist. He can write a paragraph that just wows you in its DeLillo-esque sublimity. He can sell you on a character that you would never care about otherwise (Why should I care about THIS boy getting beat up in boarding school?). He basically screws himself by injecting a quick shot of lowbrow into his highbrow prose. This, in effect, makes it neither highbrow or lowbrow. And, honestly, it misses middlebrow, too somehow, which is essentially why I had to put the book down and quit wasting my time. It felt like I was spending time in a room with a Bret Easton Ellis who thinks he is Stendhal. And that's just irresponsible. Moving on.