Reviews of three new books. The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Frank Wynne (Knopf, 264 pages, $25) When Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles was published in France in 1998 it instantly became a succès de scandale. The book's detractors called it everything from misogynist to fascist. Its supporters (largely the young) hailed it as an elegy for a decadent and dying culture. The Elementary Particles has finally been released in America, and though its concerns are as relevant to us as they are to the French, I doubt discussion will graduate from cafe culture to Oprah. Houellebecq's novel follows the parallel but diverging lives of two half-brothers, Bruno and Michel. The offspring of '60s radicals, they come of age in the individualistic and sexually liberated '70s, approximate maturation in the materialistic and conformist '80s and finally become disillusioned to the point of personal crisis in the '90s: lives shadowing the arc of modern Western culture. Bruno struggles with his physical self-image in a youth-haunted society. Vainly (so to speak), he tries to fulfill himself by way of a libertine hedonism filtered through quasi-religious New Age spirituality. Michel, a brilliant geneticist, is incapable of emotional or physical love. By withdrawing into philosophy and close readings of Huxley he seeks a transcendent ideal. Finally, an epiphany provides him with an idea that will fundamentally transform human nature. Houellebecq has the audacity to condemn literally to death a culture that he insists is morally corrupt and spiritually vapid, calling into question the so-called liberal values that have been so pervasive since the "swinging" '60s without ever reverting to reactionary recidivism. Houellebecq is a misanthrope, yes, but a misanthrope with a plan. Jason Chan Merrick by Anne Rice (Knopf, 307 pages, $26.95) For anyone who is not a die-hard Anne Rice fan, attempting to read Merrick is pretty much the equivalent of tuning in to General Hospital 37 years into the show: You don't have a clue who these people are or what they're doing, but they're so shallow and transparent that it really doesn't matter. The focal personality in the story is the eponymous Merrick, a descendant of Haitian slaves and the powerful white Mayfair clan of witches. Portrayed through the eyes of David Talbot (a member of the infamous Lestat coven first introduced in Rice's Vampire Chronicles), Merrick Mayfair is classic Anne Rice--a strange hybridization of Harlequin romance heroine and gothic fantasy woman. As Talbot recounts the geographical events that have led his life to intersect with Merrick's, his narrative becomes an obsessive journey through New Orleans to England and on to Central America. Naturally, it soon becomes apparent, with the surplus of beautiful, overwrought characters conjured up by Rice, that they will all eventually become obsessed with one another. In fact, it is Talbot's blind loyalty to his fellow vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac, that leads him to seek out Merrick to request that she contact the spirit of the dead child-vampire Claudia, the cause of de Pointe du Lac's angst-ridden misery. After bringing Merrick and de Pointe du Lac together, Talbot must face the consequences of their inevitable fascination with each other. Such bizarre character entanglements serve as an opportunity for Rice to strew the florid descriptive adjectives (replete with heaving breasts) that she and her readers so love and cherish. Joanna Burgess Ghost Light by Frank Rich (Random House, 352 pages, $24.95) Frank Rich, the principal theater critic for The New York Times from 1980 to 1993, has penned a poorly, marvelously observed memoir of his childhood and adolescence. On the one hand, the reader is confronted with over-written, trite purple prose; on the other, there appear lucidly direct passages of genuine feeling and syntactical sensuality. The book acts in conflict with itself in much the same manner that the author's reviews seemed often at war with themselves. Rich obviously wants to "dazzle" us with his clever construction and manipulation of what he believes to be brilliant word images, while attempting to prove himself a trenchant, reportorial observer of his early years. There's certainly poignance in the book as he describes growing up with a stepfather prone to mixed paternal signals: sometimes brutally cruel, at other times expansively generous. Rich describes vividly his youthful retreat into a private world of shoebox dioramas, keeping a meticulous record of Broadway musicals--at first known only from recordings and discarded playbills, and later from personal observation. He writes passionately of his years as a ticket-taker at the National Theater in Washington and of attending Broadway shows, as well as the first time he fell in "puppy love" with a girl. Rich then relates, with some genuine affection, the story of his theatrical mentor, an itinerant theater-company manager who nurtured Rich's incipient love for the theater. Perhaps the most intriguing revelation comes from Rich's title: the single worklight burning in a darkened, empty theater, placed to ward off ghosts. Jack Booch