I'm reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery between text book chapters lately and have dog-eared points in it that I really want to blog about. The book is pop-lit for the moderately intelligent, among other things, mainly because it spoon feeds art, philosophy and Japanese culture to its readers. Instead of alluding to Marx, the protagonists will explicitly name the thinker and explain his relevant theories. Not that this is a bad thing - I've found it to be extremely useful, especially where art is concerned. But this is not what I wanted to blog about.
The book induced an existential panic attack in me a few weeks ago (again, remember that I am reading this sporadically). It muses greatly on the futility of life and the absurdity of the time-fillers of the everyday, which are topics that have longed troubled me. This lead me to think about what I actually fill my time with, and that would have to be literature and indulgences like teen pop and iCarly. Then, of course, I came to a passage in the novel that validates my passtimes:
(M)y sociologist described a classics professor who, once upon a time, would have listened to Bach... but nowadays listened to Handel and MC Solar, read Flaubert and John Le Carre, went to see Visconti and the latest Die Hard and ate hambugers at lunch and sashimi in the evening (76).
It is great, and yet utterly weighty, to acknowledge that you are just like everyone else. My love for the profound and the senseless is as universal as cheese on toast. Carbs and an indulgence, rice and soy sauce.
Finally, while there are many more things I could say about the book, perhaps my favourite part is this passage:
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 (158).
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