He seems like an incredibly fascinating and flawed man, and I love reading his novels (not to say that I agree with the views in them..), but I've never been quite sure where the real Houellebecq starts and the fictional persona begins. Maybe what you see is who he is, but I'm not sure.

Good question, given that he murdered himself in his last novel.

I haven't read the one that came out this year, but in previous novels I always got a sense that a lot of the writing did speak to his actual opinions, and felt like I could tell alot about him just from his fiction - but always also with the underlying question of not being sure where he was drawing from personal opinions and where he was being entirely fictional.