“He squinted at me vaguely, as if pained by the white glare of the enormous billboard across the street advertising a new Disney movie. Smoke drifted out of the side of his mouth, and an inch of drooping ash fell silently onto the sleeve of his old blue windbreaker, which was spotted with white paint. Though he was nominally the center of attention, his movements and speech were so minimal it took a certain amount of concentration to remember he was there.” But he was, indeed, there: Michel Houellebecq was visiting Los Angeles for the first time, and Brendan Bernhard was with him. In a profile for the LA Weekly, Bernhard describes spending a few days with the controversial French novelist, beginning with their first meeting, when he found Houellebecq “smoking a cigarette at a sidewalk table at Mel’s Diner on Sunset Boulevard. . . . Houellebecq had finished picking his way through a mound of what was billed on the menu as Santa Fe Chicken Salad. (Asked what he thought of it, he described it tactfully as ‘something quite specific.’) The dish had now been moved aside, replaced by an enormous cup of black, glimmering liquid. A passerby stopped at the table and stared down at the cup. ‘Is that a quadruple espresso?’ he asked in amazement . . . .”