After reading a book, I often try to distill the essence of the book into a short summary. Perhaps I should seek employment with Reader's Digest.
I have just finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, a French novelist and philosophy professor. This award-winning book tells the story of two closet intellectuals: Renee, a middle-aged concierge whose voracious reading has given her a knowledge of High Culture far above her station in life, and Paloma, an ultra-precocious girl of twelve. (Paloma owes a bit too much to the writings of Amelie Nothomb. Why are the French so fond of hearing social criticism from the mouths of young girls? It must trace back to Joan of Arc somehow.)
The delightful characterization of Renee is the chief reason for reading the book. In other regards, the book is less interesting: the plot is thin; the Paloma sections seem forced; and the ending is a complete botch. But, as novels are primarily about characters, a great character such as Renee redeems much.
I decided to check out the book from the library upon reading Renee's forthright description of herself:
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My name is Renee. I am fifty-four years old. For twenty-seven years I have been the concierge at number 7, rue de Grenelle, a fine hotel particulier with a courtyard and private gardens, divided into eight luxury apartments, all of which are inhabited, all of which are immense. I am a widow, I am short, ugly, and plump, I have bunions on my feet and, if I am to credit certain early mornings of self-inflicted disgust, the breath of a mammoth. I did not go to college, I have always been poor, discreet, and insignificant. I live alone with my cat, a big, lazy tom who has no distinguishing features other than the fact that his paws smell bad when he is annoyed. Neither he nor I make any effort to take part in the social doings of our respective species. Because I am rarely friendly -- though always polite -- I am not liked, but am tolerated nonetheless: I correspond so very well to what social prejudice has collectively construed to be a typical French concierge that I am one of the multiple cogs that make the great universal illusion turn, the illusion according to which life has a meaning that can be easily deciphered.
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To console herself and to give her fine intellect expression, Renee has become a autodidact:
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I have read so many books...
And yet, like most autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gained from them. There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there is to know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of nowhere, weaving together all the disparate strands of my reading -- and then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates, and no matter how often I reread the same lines, they seem to flee ever further with each subsequent reading, and I see myself as some mad old fool who thinks her stomach is full because she's been reading the menu. Apparently this combination of ability and blindness is a symptom exclusive to the autodidact. Deprived of the steady guiding hand that any good education provides, the autodidact possesses nonetheless the gift of freedom and conciseness of thought, where official discourse would put up barriers and prohibit adventure.
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I enjoyed Renee's frequent diatribes against modern French life. Here she inveighs against television:
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Television distracts us from the onerous necessity of finding projects to construct in the vacuity of our frivolous lives: by beguiling our eyes, television releases our mind from the great work of making meaning.
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I recommend the book, especially the beginning chapters. Skim the last fifty pages.
