Houellebecq wrote a novel... not a claim to "know".

I'd guess — just a guess, I know nothing of him — that Barrett doesn't spend much of the day considering the costs of global industrial capitalism and the systems it foments... as I'm certain Houellebecq does.

While you hit some of the plot points, I'd say you missed what Possibility of Island is "about" by a large measure...

I'll finish with MH himself:

Few beings have ever been so impregnated, pierced to the core, by the conviction of the absolute futility of human aspiration. The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A figure in transition toward chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear. Other races in turn will appear and disappear. And human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movements of the elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure ‘Victorian fictions.’ All that exists is egotism. Cold, intact, and radiant.

-- Houellebecq

when i was a wee lad in a band in the late 90s, i think everyone in the van was at least attempting to read DFW's Infinite Jest...

Wow, this sounds great! Levi is a force for good in this town. Wish I could attend.