I’m still greatly enjoying The Elegance of the Hedgehog . Last night I had a dream I found a couple of hedgehogs and decided to keep them as pets. I can’t recall a book ever making its way into my dream before.

The story is about the families in a well-to-do apartment building in Paris, and is told from the point of views of two residents: a twelve year old prodigy and a intellectually vibrant but fiercely solitary concierge. (The only way to describe a concierge to the non-French is to say… um… they live at the entrance of the building and take note of who comes and goes. A sort of manager.)

Both the girl and the woman are far more than they seem outwardly, as they’re both far more intellectually alive than any of their counterparts.

But onto the quotes. These are from the little girl:

Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don’t want to go. The most intelligent among them turn their malaise into a religion: oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence! … I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what had happened to them…
And yet there’s nothing to understand. The problem is that children believe what adults say and, once they’re adults themselves, they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children. “Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is’ is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realise it’s not true, it’s too late. The mystery remains intact, but all your available energy has long ago been wasted on stupid things. All that’s left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can’t find any meaning in your life, and then, the better to convince yourself, you deceive your own children.

I love how European authors are allowed to be as bleak and grouchy as they want. It makes me happy to know someone is allowed to be.

…no one seems to have thought of the fact that if life is absurd, being a brilliant success has no greater value than being a failure.

Let us just say that the idea of struggling to make my way in a world of privileged, affluent people exhausted me before I even tried…There was only one thing I wanted: to be left alone, without too many demands upon my person, so that for a few moments each day I might be allowed to assuage my hunger [for knowledge/books] .

My mother, who has read all of Balzac and quotes Flaubert at every dinner, is living proof every day of how education is a raving fraud.