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January
2010
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Jenny chose this book which has sold like wildfire in its native
France, and, by the time my copy was printed in 2008, over 2.5 million
copies worldwide. Seeing it on Waterstone's front table she was
intrigued, as it didn't in fact look like a populist book, but a
pretty typical serious French novel about some pretty serious themes,
being the parallel and converging stories of two people in a very
plush Left Bank apartment block: fifty-four-year-old concierge Renee
who is hiding from the residents that she is an autodidact passionate
and knowledgeable about culture, the arts and philosophy, and twelve-year-old
Paloma Josse, extremely bright daughter of intellectually left-wing
but bourgeois parents, determined to avoid such a hypocritical future
for herself and therefore to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday.
The narrative consists of alternating sections of their journals
as their lives slowly come together - indeed, as they come to recognize
each other as fellow spirits - and as they contemplate their artistic
and philospohical concerns, most particularly around the subject
of 'Beauty' and our ability to apprehend it.
Jenny said that she had enjoyed the book, but that she hadn't been
able to escape the feeling whenever she got to the philospohical
bits that it was pretentious. Doug immediately said that it was
the most pretentious book he had ever read, and some people nodded
furiously while others looked dismayed.
A core objection of the detractors was that Renee herself was hypocritical.
For one thing, it is hard to see why in this day and age (the novel,
despite its dated air, is set in contemporary Paris) she needs to
go to such lengths to hide her intelligence and refinement - she
puts the residents off the scent by keeping her television running
and the smell of boiled cabbage drifting under the door while she
reads philosophy or appreciates good tea and home-made fine cakes
with her immigrant cleaner friend (her only luxury) - when the residents'
alleged prejudices would most likely blind them to the truth about
her anyway. Indeed, the opening pages are intended to illustrate
this last: here Renee is so disgusted by the intellectual pretension
of one of the young adult sons of the apartment block that she lets
slip a comment that shows she has a far greater understanding than
he of the subject about which he is showing off (Marx), but of course
he's so fixed on the notion of her as an ignorant peasant that he
doesn't notice. And why does she want to hide it anyway? There is
a reason given later which most of us felt didn't hold water, but
could it be that Renee, and indeed the author, are as much in thrall
as the residents to the old-fashioned French class consciousness
which the book claims to despise, and as unwilling to upset it -
indeed, pleased to relish it? Thus am I, poor concierge,
says Renee, resigned to a total lack of luxury - but I am an
anomaly in the system, living proof of how grotesque it is, and
every day I mock it gently (note that word 'gently': not savagely
or passionately then?), deep within my impenetrable self.
I said that the thing that I really didn't like about the book was
its deep contempt. In both Renee's and Paloma's eyes the world is
crudely divided into Us-and-Them, goodies and baddies, beautiful
souls and non-beautiful souls. Beautiful things belong to beautiful
souls, says Renee, but in this novel it is not the rich who
have beautiful souls, as a rule. She says: For those who have
been favoured by life's indulgence, rigorous respect in matters
of beauty is a non-negotiable requirement ... To the rich ... falls
the burden of Beauty. And if they cannot assume it, then they deserve
to die. And of course, as a rule, in this novel they cannot.
To be rich in the universe of this novel is to be by definition
basically stupid, or at least lacking in insight and true intelligence
or culture, however 'arty' or 'literary' like Paloma's despised
mother you are, or however academic like her despised sister Colombe
who is writing a thesis on the philosophy of an obscure medieval
monk. (There is no real evidence that any of Paloma's family are
as hypocritical as she claims: as someone in the group said, like
most of the residents they remain shadowy stereotypes). Ann said
at this point that the book was as much as anything an attack on
the pretensions of the French education system, which seems true,
but then, I said, it's a hypocritical attack: Renee makes much of
the complete waste of public money on the arcane subject of Colombe's
research, its uselessness to society and the fact that it's being
conducted on the backs of hard-working men and women, but this makes
something of a mockery of her own allegiance to the contemplation
of art and truth for its own sake (so much for its own sake that
she'll hide it from the world). Only the autodidact is intellectually
pure, the novel seems to be saying (and some bits of culture are
snobbishly more worthy of contemplation than others), and, presumably,
that Renee justifies her intellectual life and pursuits by being
a hard-working woman herself (not that in fact she seems to do much
work). All of which makes the accusation that Paloma's mother has
(according to Paloma) a 'holier-than-thou-intellectual-left-wing-pose'
seem like the pot calling the kettle black.
Others who come in for Paloma's contempt are her rich schoolfriends,
particularly for their affectation of the manners and mores of poor
kids, which presumably by rights belong, in the division-compounds
of this novel, to the poor kids exclusively (and presumably the
rich kids should be embracing the mores which the novel despises).
Someone in the group commented that the only 'real' person in her
class, and the only one Paloma befriends, is truly working class,
but is in a fact very much a stereotype, being also black, and that
the novel portrays her patronisingly as something of another noble
savage (Renee being the other). Meanwhile, there's Renee's Grammar
Nazism (a strong feature, indeed, of the French education system
which the novel purports to critique). While this is typically French,
as I conceded, and while I can be a bit of stickler for grammar
myself, it's very over the top here. A resident leaves a casual
note for Renee which contains an extraneous comma, and Renee responds
thus: 'I was not prepared for such an underhand attack. I collapse
in shock on the nearest chair. I even begin to wonder if I am not
going mad, and then spends two pages of her journal expounding
the iniquity of this comma and its author, and ending in the above
quote about those rich folks who can't assume the burden of Beauty
deserving to die.
Both Paloma and Renee are enamoured of all things Japanese, which
in the simplistic context of the novel struck most of us as mere
exoticism as well as a contrived coincidence, unless you believe
as they do that only the Japanese appreciate true 'Beauty'. (Paloma
and Renee do not know each other at the beginning of the novel).
(People had noted early in the discussion that, apart from the applied
teen-speak in Paloma's, the two journals are very alike in tone,
concern and voice.) The novel rather suddenly takes on the character
of a fairytale when, after one of the residents dies, who should
move into his flat but Kakuro Ozu, a distant relative of Renee's
favourite Japanese filmmaker. Sure enough, Ozu turns out to be the
one rich person who appreciates true 'Beauty', and is a fellow spirit
for both Paloma and Renee whom he befriends individually (he and
Paloma immediately share their suspicions that Renee is really a
cultured soul). One of my objections to this novel was that, in
spite of all the tracts of philosophising, it seemed to me (insofar
as I could concentrate on the philosophical bits which often seriously
held up the narrative) 'Beauty' is taken as an absolute. At this
point, however, it is inadvertently revealed as a matter of mere
taste, and material taste at that, more material indeed than the
concerns of Paloma's own family. What makes Ozu so cultured is not
just his music and his films, but his beautiful blue bowl and his
special musical flushing toilet and his elegant sliding doors and
his taste in refined Japanese food. And lo, he is after all Prince
Charming, who whisks Renee off her feet and sends her, if not a
glass slipper, elegant clothes to wear out to dinner with him, such
that no one in the lobby recognises her! So much for her intellectual
independence and purity, divorced from the taint of riches! Maybe
we are meant to see that Renee, like Ozu, is one of those rare souls
who can take on the burden of Beauty in spite of riches, but this
rather undermines the original conceit of the novel in which her
poverty has purified her, and seemed to most of us to pull against
a deeper impulse in the novel irrevocably linking riches with hypocrisy.
While we had been saying these things, Clare had been throwing in
rather annoyed protests, though without managing to say very much
to support her viewpoint. Now she had formulated her thoughts, however,
and she said rather passionately that she thought that we detractors
were entirely mistaken about the novel, and that all of the inconsistencies
we had been pointing out were in fact intended by the author: we
were meant to laugh at Renee and Paloma for their hypocrisies. This
dumbfounded us rather, and looking back at such ludicrous moments
as the comma incident, we could see their potential for comedy.
However, none of the rest of us had found that the tone of the novel
had led us to read it in that way: while we agreed that there had
definitely been comic moments, mainly in relation to other characters
(and particularly in Paloma's depictions of them), we felt we had
been meant to take entirely seriously the philosophical musings
of both main characters, Renee's especially, and in turn the two
characters themselves and their situations.
We considered the possibility that perhaps the translation was at
fault and had failed to convey the comic tone of the original. However,
I said that one thing that made me doubt that the novel was as clever
as Clare was saying was that there were some pretty fundamental
errors in the narrative voice and structure. Neither journal has
a very convincing register in that each directly addresses an objective
reader in the way journals simply don't, with phrases like Don't
you think? More radically, one of the journals continues after
the death of its author, indeed describing that death. Trevor said
that that was ridiculous, I couldn't say that, (ie that these things
could indicate that the author wasn't being deliberately comic).
But also, I said, endings of novels are particularly telling, and
don't the final words of this novel constitute a conclusion to the
philosophising, which we appear to be meant to take deadly seriously?
but as Clare hadn't actually finished reading the novel yet she
couldn't comment on that. John said that he also thought that the
ending in terms of action/plot (which I won't give away here) was
a clumsy cop-out, the only way that the author could find to resolve
a basically psychologically and socially unconvincing situation,
but Trevor and Jenny and Clare said that they'd liked the ending.
Andrew said he had found it very moving indeed, and I had to confess
that I had found it moving too in spite of everything.
Clare stuck to her guns about the cleverness of the novel, but she
did concede that there was some stereotyping of a 'goodies and baddies'
nature - she remembered being shocked by Paloma's utterly vicious
attack on the dying resident as a 'nasty man', which is backed by
not a shred of evidence.
New member Andrew then spoke up and said that actually, he had liked
this novel, and Trevor said that he had as well, in spite of agreeing
with some of the criticisms, and Jenny repeated that in spite of
her own doubts she had too. Andrew said that most of all he had
enjoyed the philosophical passages, as he didn't normally get to
read philosophy, and had found it really interesting. The doubters
among us groaned, and I said that I'd found them both pretentious
and holding up the action. But wasn't I interested in those ideas?
Andrew wanted to know. I replied that yes I am, very interested
in philosophical ideas, and indeed when it comes to novels I am
most interested in novels of ideas, but I think that in novels ideas
work best and most dynamically when they emerge through the action.
Here they were of course presented wholesale, and I found I just
couldn't concentrate on them. Clare said that she didn't have that
problem as she was basically familiar with the ideas, having done
a philosophy course as part of her degree. I said that I had too,
and that I too was familiar with the ideas, but I wasn't inclined
to try to follow them here as the way they were presented required
a different kind of attention from that with which you read novels
(apart from the fact that I was alienated by their proponents' intellectual
snobbery). Clare said but this is a very French mode for novels,
and Andrew said, but there are plenty of novels where there are
long passages of philosophy, what about Crime and Punishment, and
Jenny said, but it's an old-fashioned long-winded mode which nowadays
she just can't stand any more. And anyway, I said again, there seems
a discrepancy between the idea of taking Renee in a comic light
and taking her philosophising so seriously, and that on the whole
I felt that this reflected the fact that the novel itself was muddled.
Then someone posed the question as to why, in spite of the intellectual
content and its difficulties, the novel had been such a runaway
populist success. Ann said that she thought that it appealed to
a certain kind of intellectual snobbery which is particularly strong
in France, whereby one can feel good by check-listing all the cultural
references - including, here, the reference in the title to Isiah
Berlin's distinction between two different types of writers as single-minded
foxes or intellectually versatile hedgehogs. This last had been
lost on the rest of us in our group, however, and on reflection
it seems to me that in fact not many people would truly appreciate
all the references. Therefore, rather, it seems to me, the book
flatters most of all the reader who doesn't, by making him/her feel
clever in spite of it, as part of an exclusive little intellectual
club with Renee and Paloma.
At which point we agreed to differ, and the group began to break
up and the first of us ventured back out into the snow.
Next
discussion will be about Henty James's The Turn of the Screw,
suggested by John.
Click here to see a list of the books
previously discussed
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