It’s only May and already the always hotly-contested Mother of the Year award is reaching temperatures approaching that of the heart of the sun. Don’t let Dina Lohan’s recent winning of Long Island’s MotY prize fool you: only on Lawn Gyland does the year end in May, and besides, as someone on Defamer pointed out, her competition was who, exactly? Amy Fisher’s mom.
Quite.
But I think our intrepid reportorial friends at the Guardian have come up with the one to beat. Yes, in Lucie Ceccaldi, mother of French literary bad boy Michel Houellebecq, we have our Brutus, our Secretariat, our Muhammad Ali, and possibly even our AntiChrist all rolled up in one wizened, bitter, 83-year-old bundle of patchouli-scented, tie-dyed 100% pure hatred.
Let’s listen in on some of her thoughts on parenting. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride:
She calls her son an “evil, stupid little bastard” adding that “this individual, who alas came from my womb, is a liar, an imposter, a parasite and above all - above all - a petit arriviste ready to do absolutely anything for money and fame…If he is unfortunate enough to use my name in something again, I’ll cane him round the face, that’ll knock his teeth out, that’s for sure.”
“If it hadn’t been my son, I wouldn’t read that kind of crap, I would put it down straight away, because if there’s one thing I detest in the world it’s pornography. That book is pure pornography, it’s repugnant, it’s crap. I don’t understand its success at all, that just shows the decadance of France.” In her own book, she speculates that he writes about sex because he doesn’t get enough. “What’s this moronic literature?! Houellebecq is someone who’s never done anything, who’s never really desired anything, who never wanted to look at others. And that arrogance of taking yourself as superior … Stupid little bastard. Yes, Houellebecq’s a stupid little bastard, whether he’s my son or not.”Does she believe in mother love? “Western women get on my nerves with their mother love.”
Do you love your son? “Yes, of course I love my son. If he dropped dead, I’d be profoundly hurt, definitively, but I wouldn’t complain in newspapers and write a book about it.”
On her son’s relationships with women she says: “Above all he loves money, and women have always kept him - first, me, and then his good wives. The second one I never met, and I don’t know the others who came after her.”
I mention that he lives in Ireland. “Does he? If he was less of a stupid bastard, I’d go and see him.”
Charmant.
