Sounds like a Swell Guy

This (via The New Criterion) from an article by Emily Eakin in The New York Times about her visit with French writer Michel Houellebecq.

Houellebecq answered the door in stocking feet … and ushered me into the living room. He curled up in a chair with a pack of Silk Cuts and a bottle of Jim Beam and hardly moved for the entire weekend… .

By the time we sat down to dinner—in the living room—he was too inebriated to eat. He picked at his boiled crab and got some of it on his sleeve. His head began to nod; his eye-lids drooped. But for the first time all day, he looked almost cheerful. “I am the star of French literature,” he slurred. “The most radical one of all.” He reached over and petted my knee. “What’s your name again?” he mumbled. “How would you like to be in my erotic film?”