The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, 2006, by Muriel Barbery.

It is with a heavy heart I start this post on the best book I've read in a very long time. I wish the book was longer. I will miss the characters. Two people, a 54 year old concierge, Renée Michel, and a twelve year old girl who lives in the building, Paloma Josse, both deliberately conceal their intelligence and sensitivity from others. The chapters alternate from the journal entry of one to the diary of the other, giving readers two perspectives on class consciousness, art, literature and the everyday. Eventually, with the help of a new tenant, Japanese business man Kakuro Ozu, Renée and Paloma recognize one another as kindred souls.

An excerpt from Paloma's diary provides an idea of their internal dialogue (p. 158): 

Personally I think grammar is a way to attain beauty. When you speak, or read, or write, you can tell if you've said or read or written a fine sentence. You can recognize a well-turned phrase or an elegant style.  But when you are applying the rules of grammar skillfully, you ascend to another level of the beauty of language. When you use grammar you peel back the layers, to see how it is all put together, see it quite naked, in a way. And that's where it becomes wonderful, because you say to yourself, "Look how well-made this is, how well-constructed it is! How solid and ingenious, rich and subtle!"

Writing as a craft is a familiar concept, but somehow this adjective, "solid," combined with "How," as a declaration of startling wonder, struck me. I saw more clearly how an expert of language may experience literature, how a sentence can be immediately satisfying or offensive in the way a that with a glance, one knows if a room is tidy or a mess. But further, this description of "solid" turns writing into a sturdy, concrete, visible object, be it in the metaphoric form of architecture or machine.

From Renée's journal (p.248):

Literature for example, serves a pragmatic purpose. Like any form of Art, literature's mission is to make the fulfillment of our essential duties more bearable. For a creature like man, who must forge his destiny by means of thought and reflexivity, the knowledge gained from this will perforce be unbearably lucid. We know that we are beasts who have this weapon for survival, and that we are not gods creating a world with our own thoughts, and something has to make our own wisdom bearable, something has to save us from the woeful eternal fever of biological destiny.

Therefore, we have invented Art: our animal selves have devised another way to ensure the survival of our species.

Renée and Paloma's entries complement each other. Together, they offer a definition of Art, how to experience and savor it, and they persuade us that we need Art to live.

I pick this entry from Paloma's diary to illustrate what by their definition -- the recognition of purpose and meaning in the fleeting -- can serve as Art:

Diane Badoise was completely thrown out of joint when she twisted hr ankle, making weird angles with her knees, her arms and her head, and to top it off, her ponytail sticking out horizontally like that -- and I immediately thought of the Bacon in the bathroom. For a very brief moment she looked like a disjointed rag doll, her body completely contorted and, for a few thousandths of a second, Diane Badoise looked like a full-length portrait by Bacon. From that impression to the consideration that the thing in the bathroom has been there all these years just so now I could fully appreciate her bizarre contortions, there is only a short step.