The Elegance of the Hedgehog

A book I found in the apartment that looked interesting, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, is a touching, stream-of-consciousness gem that, I think I can say, moved me.


I read it in English (grace à the copy available) though it was originally written and published in French. The story revolves around a concierge named Renée in a ritzy Parisian apartment building who has had to hide her intelligence and love of art and culture all her life, and a 12-year-old girl  named Paloma living in the apartment building, daughter of a university professor and a French parliamentarian, who has the same problem.


I liked the book from its cover, which originally made me want to read it. Also, Johanna collects hedgehogs, and I wondered if this had been given to her based on the title.


It turns out, Renée is compared to a hedgehog by Paloma: tough and prickly on the outside but soft and uassuming on the inside. For some reason that makes them elegant. Not the word I would choose, but whatever. Eventually Renée and Paloma develop a friendship, and become confidants for each other's inner lives, until tragedy strikes. 


The format of the novel is a bifurcated narration, half Renée, half Paloma, and centers a lot on interior monologue and journal entries. Literary and high-brow cultural references abound, as well as some pop culture stuff, mostly pertaining to France. The book is very French - that is, catering to a French audience and written by a French person. It has the same sort of set-up, mistakes, poignant details and allusions as a Truffaut film, with tone and style elements borrowed, it seems, from a Marguerite Duras play, or a Philippe Claudel novel.


The extreme intelligence of both main characters is at first a bit hard to believe, as we only have their opinions to go on, and irksome later on, when they seem so absorbed in absorbing culture, literature, the beauty of the world, etc., that they become static - unmoving, uninterested, and yes, even selfish - vessels of such intelligence. If there really were two geniuses residing at 7, rue de Grenelle, Paris, shouldn't they be doing something more proactive and constructive than whining about how they're so smart that no one will understand them, and the world is so bleak that it's best not to get involved - or just end it all? 


That's not to say Barbery didn't pull off the characters. The book did have remarkably funny parts, and was great fun to read.  Considering myself an intellectual, and tickled especially when I come across obscure references to things I like (Mozart, Kant, Tolstoy, etc.), I loved the characters and the idea behind what Barbery was trying to accomplish. But upon finishing The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I found the idea underdeveloped as a whole. It lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. 

Famous Austrians: Marie-Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette is famous for being the last queen of France. As the youngest child of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Franz I of Austria, however, it should be obvious (especially to those of you who saw the Sofia Coppola verson) that this archduchess and eventual queen spent her youth in the Habsburg residence in Vienna, Hofburg (just down the street from the Museums Quartier, for those interested in taking a tour) and the summer home of Schönbrunn. However, despite how Sofia characterizes her in the film, Marie-Antoinette spoke German and French growing up, as well as Italian, and did not have to learn the language upon her marriage to Louis XVI. That's just a bit of an exaggeration. Perhaps done because Kirsten Dunst played her.

Other interesting facts: the film correctly portrayed her party-girl persona; and the fact that the French didn't really like her (and called her names like l'Autruchienne: ostrich-bitch, a play on l'Autrichienne: Austrian woman); also, she was basically betrothed to the dauphin Louis because too many of her sisters died of smallpox or were already betrothed to other royals and, thus, she was the only one left when France came a-calling. This may be one of the reasons it took seven years to consummate the marriage.    

Possibly the first to establish "shabby chic" as a fashion choice, what with her penchant for "farming" at Petit Trianon and the robe à la polonaise, Madame Antoinette was way ahead of her time in the world of fashion. Perhaps too far ahead, which made the French dislike her more! Not interested in much more than fashion or cakes (well, she was Austrian), poor Marie-Antoinette ended up being somebody's political stool pigeon throughout her reign, from the Affair of the Diamond Necklace (thanks to that bitch Madame du Barry), to the dubious attribution "Let them eat cake" - it seems she never got a break. Until the end that is, when she did get one: right on her neck.

That Summer in Paris

Here is a testament to my lack of focus...

I recently finished (by recently, I mean yesterday) a book I bought in Montreal at a used bookshop, The Word. It came highly recommended in Lonely Planet, but was unfortunately disappointing when we got inside. But that is beside the point. The point is, I started it in Montreal and lugged it around since, to finish it...yesterday. In Austria.

The title, as you may have guessed, is That Summer in Paris, written by Morley Callaghan (who? Yes, I'm getting to that). Famous in his own right in the 1920s and 1930s, Morley Callaghan was a Canadian writer who grew up in Montreal and ended up hightailing it to Paris with the best of them in the 20s and became part of the ex-pat community, including Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway - and the less well-known of them: Robert McAlmon, Sherwood Anderson, etc.  

Furthermore, I have a thing about ex-pat writers in general, and a really big thing about the Summer of '29 - and most things Hemingway. I read a now out-of-print collection of short stories, Men without Women while I was living in Paris in the summer of 2008, finishing out an internship. The book had been left in the apartment I was renting, and, seeing as I had an hour commute every day to get from one side of the city to the other, I ended up reading a lot that summer - a book a week, at least. I now regret not stealing the book from the apartment, considering it has been out of print for several years and I am unlikely to ever find it the way I read it. However, I hope the current inhabitant of my former apartment in enjoying it as much as I did.

Unfortunately for poor Morley, he wasn't very popular outside of Canada, except for a few short stories. I had never heard of the guy, to be honest, and what drew me to the book was the fact that Hemingway and Fitzgerald were both on the cover (a first edition - 1963, which would be worth something if a) Morley Callaghan were actually famous and b) it were not a paperback). 

Callaghan seems to think, however, that he was the inspiration for one or other character in The Sun Also Rises and suffers under the expectation of greatness - don't we all, though? I was originally enraptured by his name-dropping, which, by the end became tedious:

"One September afternoon in 1960 I was having a drink with an old newspaper friend, Ken Johnstone,   when unexpectedly he told me he had a message to pass on from Ronnie Jacques, the well-know New   York photographer. Jacques had been in Sun Valley taking some pictures of Hemingway, and they had gotten to talking about me." 

No doubt, Morley. Surely his ears were always burning.

The central theme of That Summer in Paris is this boxing match between Callaghan and Hemingway during that summer, where Callaghan knocked the $#^& out of Hemingway while Fitzgerald kept time (poorly), against which Hemingway took personal grievance - his relationship with Fitzgerald was never good to begin with - and is coincidentally (or not) mentioned both on the first page and used as the climax of the story arch. Why? This was obviously the highlight of Morley Callaghan's life, and he didn't have much else to write about. Certainly it could not have been because the scene was so intensely interesting. 

I continued reading, despite flat prose and excruciating ego because I decided I might as well, having bought the book. And the funny thing is, I have a character who is Morley Callaghan - I just didn't know it until I read That Summer in Paris and could compare my ideas on the aspiring (but ultimately doomed) writer and his real-life counterpart (poor baby - would have ended up teaching in a community college were it not for Hemingway) which I hope will prove fruitful. Otherwise, I wasted $6.50 CAD and almost 3 months...

Paris, cont.

I almost forgot! In my freak-out, sleep-deprived post-airport angst, I *almost* didn't post these photos I took in Paris!

I walked up to the Sacre Coeur from my hostel, and wandered around until I had to leave for Vienna.

Here is a carousel/gift shop    -->

 Nothing like getting your consumerist kicks in at a sacred site, right?

 <--  Here is a view of the street from the courtyard.













A little farther up the path. No "pelerins a genoux" here. (see Montreal Page)

 And finally, a view from the top!

Revanche! Relance!

CDG - mid bomb scare

Paris: AIEEE!

First, I get into Charles de Gaulle at 1:30 pm and figure I need to mail one of my suitcases, because I am definitely over the baggage weight  limit for a within-Europe puddle-jumper. So, expecting I will have to mail my suitcase to Amstetten, I walk over to the Austrian Airlines kiosk (after asking at 3 *other* information booths) and the guy takes one look at my bags & says that my stuff is all too big to fit on the plane & it will cost 15 euro per kilo over limit (20 kg is the limit - I have at least 50 kilo to schlepp around) so I kind of freak out & then go find the post office in CDG. I get my 23 kilo bag out to mail to Amstetten for 68 euro and then schlepp the rest of my shit back up to the area where you can get on the Metro...

My carry-on luggage

What should happen then, but the French National Guard comes storming in, big burly guys with machine guns & tell everyone to get out of the airport area and they turn off the escalators and people run around screaming (well, OK, the French don't go running around screaming, but some less obnoxious, subtle, French version of that - if only for effect), and then finally they turn everything back on, and the crowd dissipates, and then I ask some old guy smoking his 10 millionth cigarette what just happened and he's like, "bomb."

GREAT! I know they had a bomb scare earlier in CDG, like two weeks ago or something, but, seriously, what is with this? Anyway, the army dudes apparently got the whole thing figured out & once the escalators were turned back on, we were all safe once again, and I could actually get down to the trains. So, I hopped on the RER Bleu to get to Gare du Nord and got to the Woodstock Hostel. So absolutely exhausted b/c slept max. 5 hours last night. Our stupid new neighbors leave their dog out all night right outside my bedroom window to bark its fool head off. Mom has taken to spraying it in the face with water every time it barks - including in the middle of the night! It did not help last night, but perhaps after a few weeks of old-fashioned Pavlovian training, she will get somewhere. At this point, I think, Detroit-Wayne has nothing on CDG. If you don't have to go to the airport, Paris is wonderful. If all you do is sit in the airport trying to figure out how you are going to get yourself AND your overweight baggage to Vienna, Paris sucks.

So once I get to the Woodstock, I take this picture of my bed:

Oh, sweet, dear, beloved bed!

But I can't go to bed right away. It is only 4:30 and I have to wait until bed-time like Rick Steves says, so my body can adjust to the time change in a healthy way & I won't be overly harried by jet lag. So, I figure I might as well introduce myself to my roommate, who is sitting outside smoking on the patio area, and from whom I had to get the key. It's only polite to introduce myself, right?

She's sitting with two other guys, and I can tell already she's German, even though she's speaking in English. She is talking nonstop in that funny way Germans have when they are speaking in English.  But, well, still charming. At least to me. I introduce myself and at first she thinks I am French (or speaks to me in French anyway) but I figure she is talking to someone who does not know French because they had been speaking in English. There are actually 3 people at the picnic table in the patio area: Christine, the German, Rasmus the Dane and Simon, who is from New Zealand. Well, I guess that explains why they're speaking in English. I think, OK, I'll introduce myself, chat for 20 minutes, and then grab something to eat from the sushi restaurant down the street, come back and go to bed before 6. Awesome plan, right?

Well, I sit down and start chatting, and we are all having an interesting conversation. The next thing I know, the sun is setting. I think, Oh, it's getting darker earlier. It's probably around 7. Then, we chat more. Christine tells me she is an occupational therapist in Paris on her vacation. Rasmus is a student planning on becoming a Kindergarten teacher, and Simon just competed in the Settlers of Catan world championship in Germany (playing for Australia, who came in 6th place - out of 30 teams). Who'd a-thunk? So, anyway, about 10 minutes after the sun goes down, I look at my phone to see what time it is, and it is already 9:30! OMG, I think. No wonder I'm tired! Minus the 2 hours I slept on the plane (half of Clash of the Titans and then an extra 45 minutes before they served a pre-landing snack), I have been up for 30 hours. I can hardly believe it.

The Flight: Chi-Town => Dublin

I took off from Chicago yesterday, and going through security, I saw this little Asian man with three cases of Jack Daniels from the duty free shops. All I can say is, if you're going to splurge in the duty-free shops (and get your money's worth out of it being duty-free), you might as well do it with Jack Daniel's. I'm sure the guy's some high-powered Japanese/Korean/Chinese businessman who needs copious amounts of whiskey to give as company presents, etc. But still~ that's a lot of booze!

So, in O'Hare, waiting to board, I sat across from this big, loud Irish family. The daughter was sitting directly across from me, a little hefty, with sort of typical Irish coloring (dark hair, blue eyes, freckles) and wearing this big black down puffer jacket making her look twice as big as she actually is. In light of my joint writing adventure with Callie, The Fat American (inquire if you dare!) I thought about a companion piece to be published in France, which could be titled, L'Irlandaise Grande and set in Chicago. Well, then again, maybe not. I just really like the title.

Once I got on the plane, this American woman who had been standing behind me for much of the check-in/security/boarding says to me, "I love your hair." And then her husband says, "As we say here, it's like a woolly lamb." Was this supposed to be complimentary? Where is "here"? Chicago? The US? Did they think I'm Irish? Anyway, they were the average middle-aged couple going on some sort of vacation to the rolling hills of Ireland, possibly pandering to some sort of idealized version of Gaelic tradition, and discretely reminiscent family histories (i.e. that great-great-uncle Seamus came into New York harbor in 1892 from County Cork with nary a possession in the world but the shirt on his back - the only thing he *didn't* drink away in the taverns of Kanturk). Not that I'm a cynic, or that I don't wish them a good time. Nothing of that sort.

My choice of in-flight movie was Clash of the Titans. I was debating between that and Remember Me with Robert Pattinson but considering the bizarre dream I had about going to summer camp and being bitten...don't really need to go into that...I decided that I would watch action-flick rather than romantic-flick because I would be almost guaranteed to fall asleep through romantic drivel. Plus, I've been wanting to see the new Clash. And, all I have to say is: Sam Worthington is definitely the new "it" boy for action-adventure, ever since Avatar was so huge! He kind of reminds me of a Bruce Willis type - but Australian and better looking. I ended up falling asleep during that one anyway. Very disappointed there was no mechanical owl. Also, Liam Neeson ain't no Lawrence Olivier (even old man Olivier) and Ralph Fiennes is obviously being type-cast as the evil snake-like villain ever since he played Voldemort - or maybe he will just do anything if the price is right. I am also including The Reader in this type-casting thing. He was really mean to Kate Winslet's pseudo-sociopath ex-Nazi, which I thinkis saying something.

Once I got to Dublin, I got through security, and as I put my shoes back on, this little old man in a plaid jacket came up to me and asked for help finding his gate. On the ticket, he was pointing to the time the flight took off, so I figured maybe he was not familiar with flying? Or English? So, I told him to check his flight number and destination on the screens that are all around the airport, and that the gate is only listed on one of those monitors...because the airplanes normally don't know which gate they're flying into until they actually get to the airport. Well, the last I saw of him, he was standing in front of the screen checking it out, so hopefully he got to where he was going.




Looking for my own gate, I realized there was still 2 hours to go before I could board, so I went to have breakfast at this Starbucks-type place. All the workers have dialects of which I am ignorant and we are mutually unintelligible. I have to point to what I want, and they have to point to what I owe on the cash register. I really didn't think I'd have to deal with this until I got to France. So much for not having to worry about a language barrier in another English-speaking country!

<-- This is what I ordered. Egg & Mushroom sandwich that was really gross & weird. Complete w/brown sauce.

Tomorrow! Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is another day.

Tomorrow is the day I fly to Paris! How exciting.

I am packed & ready to go!

There's really not much more to say.