The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
translated from the French by Alison Anderson
5 out of 5 stars
The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a novel of ideas, perhaps reminiscent of Milan Kundera, and while it may have some flaws, I had to give it five stars because, simply, this book was my best friend while I was reading it. If you feel depressed, meaningless, cynical, bored, angry… this is the ANTI -”self-help” cheerleaders’ book. Rather, it delves into the minds of two hyper-intelligent people who are baffled and lonely because they live amongst stupidity (it includes a hilarious yet disturbing scene with a psychiatrist humiliated by a 12-year-old). The main narrator is the aging, plain concierge of a posh apartment building in Paris who is locked away in her brilliant mind, never letting on (until near the end) that she is smarter than all the rich pedants she waits on. The other narrator is a sharp, perceptive twelve-year-old who lives in one of the posh apartments and doesn’t let on how bright she is because she refuses to be pigeonholed in the role of “gifted.” The arrival to the building of a kindred spirit to both (a tasteful, sensitive Japanese man) brings them out of the cells in their brains, into the role of empathy. What is their ultimate hope, by the end? The hope is not original – it seems all critical thinkers end up with this: Beauty (moments of it in life that escape many people’s attention) and, with that, Art, are the only saving graces for critical thinkers who must dwell in a small-minded, short-sighted society. There is also much commentary on philosophy (the concierge reads Husserl), the frivolity of so much academia, Dutch still lifes, class hierarchies, guilt and death.
One green lifestyle change every day for a year. That’s the eco-challenge Vanessa Farquharson, a 27-year-old arts reporter in Toronto, set for herself in March 2007. She switched to more eco-friendly versions of common products: biodegradable pens, paraben-free lip balm, organic cotton blankets, corn-based cat litter. She cut back on using energy, water and paper by taking shorter, cooler showers in the dark and replacing paper napkins with cloth ones. She stopped using some things (styrofoam, toothpicks, tape) and reused or recycled other things (envelopes, running shoes, corks). Each day she did something to reduce her carbon footprint and blogged about it.
Her book, Sleeping Naked is Green, strings together blog entries for about a third of the environmentally-friendly changes she made. Fifteen of the changes involved transportation.
She started by making sure her car tires were fully inflated. Then she turned off the air conditioning in her car and stopped driving on weekends (although she continued to commute alone by car).
Two months into her green experiment she confessed, “As I get hyperaware of every little detail in my life and how green or un-green it is, I’m starting to feel like a bigger and bigger fraud for owning a car.” Still, she couldn’t bring herself to sell her VW Beetle right then. As the owner of a pink cell phone and a fan of the TV show America’s Next Top Model, she feared it would be unfashionable to not drive, that she’d have to wear Gore-Tex and hiking boots. Owning a car, she said, is “one of those things where—a bit like tasting real champagne—once you get it, it’s hard to give up.”
But give up her car she did two months later. “Not even 365 eco-friendly changes are going to make up for all the driving I do,” she concluded. Throughout the year she also resolved to rent only hybrid or fuel-efficient cars, drive them no faster than the speed limit and get exact directions ahead of time so she wouldn’t drive around lost. When she needed a courier, she’d only hire bike or transit-riding messengers. She started taking her bike to a green-minded repair shop and stopped taking recreational rides on motorcycles.
Farquharson loved the financial benefits of not owning a car (more money for bamboo dresses!) and even found a glamorous side to bike riding. While she was interviewing American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, he pointed to the grease mark on her right shin and asked, “Is that a rookie mark on your leg?” He reached over and ran his finger across her leg and said: “It totally is. Cool.” She had never imagined that riding a bike could get a movie star to touch you! “Ride safe,” he said with a wink as they parted.
At the end of her green year, Farquharson went back to doing about a quarter of the things she had given up: shaving her legs, flushing every time, using a hair dryer, dishwasher and vacuum cleaner. And the car? “I’m definitely not buying a car,” she wrote.
Kelly Nelson
Tempe, Arizona USA
Review of:
Sleeping Naked is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days
Vanessa Farquharson
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009
www.greenasathistle.com
Since I have read and enjoyed many of this author’s books in the past I was pleasantly surprised, while browsing at my favorite used bookstore, to come across a title I hadn’t seen before. Knowing without even reading the synopsis that I was going to like the book, I took it home and started reading it that same afternoon. As always, I was hooked by the opening sentence:
‘In dodging Robert’s hand, the furious hand aimed at her face, she fell and struck the edge of the closet’s open door instead.’
So begins WHISPERS, a gripping story of love and abuse in modern-day America.
When pretty, naive Lynn is swept off her feet by her handsome and charming boss, Robert Ferguson, at age twenty, it seems like a fairy tale come true. A rising star in a fast-growing company, the ambitious and loving Robert promises to make all of Lynn’s dreams come true. She has no reason to believe he won’t make good on those promises. However, as early as their tropical paradise honeymoon, the storybook romance is tarnished as Lynn discovers another side of Robert — a violent temper she never would have believed lurked beneath his charming exterior. Wanting to believe in his goodness and hoping for the best, she forgives his brutality and moves cautiously ahead into their future.
The years pass and the couple experiences all of the good and bad of life– the birth of children, the tragic loss of a child, friendships, success, and beneath it all, the ever present threat of Robert’s anger. Lynn tells herself the abuse is a small price to pay for all of the goodness the marriage holds, a lovely home, healthy children and the comforts of being the wife of a successful executive. Knowing she must be strong and keep the marriage intact for the sake of her children, she hides the scars, wipes away the tears, and goes on. But when her carefully concealed secret is discovered and her children begin to hear the faint whispers of gossip Lynn realizes she must look within herself and find the courage to leave.
With her classically eloquent writing style, Belva Plain paints a startling portrait of spousal abuse in corporate America and creates a realistic heroine in the character of Lynn Ferguson. So realistic that I found myself struggling along with her, almost believing with her Robert’s empty promises that things would get better. I was outraged at his cruelty, not only toward his wife, but toward shy, overweight Annie, his eleven-year-old daughter. I cried with Lynn through the bad times and cheered with her through the good. I was that wrapped up in the story.
Inspiring and evocative, WHISPERS is a story of a family’s heartbreak and redemption, and of a woman’s long journey back to herself. I recommend WHISPERS to anyone who enjoys finely crafted, resonating women’s fiction.
“Reading Mr Robinson: Companion Essays to Friendly Mission”, Anna Johnston and Mitchell Rolls (eds.)
2008, 188p. + notes.
N. J. B. Plomley’s Friendly Mission was published in 1966, with a reprint in 1971. It’s a big book, close on 1000 pages and it has been out of print for over thirty years. It has been recently re-released, and this companion book of essays has been published to accompany the new edition.
Friendly Mission made the Van Diemen’s Land journals of George Augustus Robinson available and accessible- for Robinson’s handwriting was truly wretched- for the first time to a wider audience. The essays compiled into this book testify to its importance as a contested and influential text, that itself encapsulates many of the debates about Aboriginal and Australian settler history.
There are three themes that run through the essays. The first is consideration of Friendly Mission it is own right as a text. It is obviously a book that has deeply impressed the people who have read it, or chosen not to do so. Lyndall Ryan speaks in her essay of purchasing the book in its blue covers from the top shelf in a bookshop and reading it transfixed on public transport on the way home, and the encouragement she received from Manning Clark and Rhys Jones to explore it further. A counterpoint to this enthusiasm is the response of three Palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal ) contributors who write short reflections on their response to the book. Some choose not to read it at all: others feel negated and angered by the perceived inevitability of ‘extinction’ and the self-aggrandisement and nonchalance of Robinson in the face of such tragedy.
N.J. B. or Norman James Brian Plomley- although known as Brian- was a scientist and curator who wrote widely on a variety of natural history, medical, dentistry and museum studies issues. His long introduction to Robinson’s diaries reflects the historiography of his times: he did not even consider the use of oral histories with living Tasmanian Aborigines- if, indeed he even considered them that at all- and his views on hybridity and purity of bloodline reflect attitudes towards aboriginality and identity that are not accepted today. Rebe Taylor’s essay points out that there are oral history sources available, through the Westlake Papers collected by the geologist Ernest Westlake (1855-1922) which among other things included interviews with the descendents of the Bass Strait sealers and their Aboriginal women from 1908-10. Plomley himself edited a collection of these interviews in 1991.
A second strand of these essays deals with the diarist George Augustus Robinson himself, the Great Conciliator with the Van Diemen’s Land tribes, and then Chief Protector in the Port Phillip Protectorate during the 1840s. Alan Lester’s essay ‘George Augustus Robinson and Imperial Networks’ highlights Robinson’s religious and humanitarian motivation, and places him within the context of evangelical approaches being implemented by British and American missionaries across the Cape Colony, the West Indies, and American and Canadian frontiers. Elizabeth Elbourne’s contribution ‘Between Van Diemen’s Land the the Cape Colony’ compares these two colonies, particularly in relation to the coercion of women and children, and links these to the small, but influential anti-Slavery lobby in the Colonial Office and the Aborigines Protection Society which itself was distancing itself from Robinson’s approach by the early 1840s.
Henry Reynolds in ‘George Augustus Robinson in Van Diemen’s Land: Race, Status and Religion’ embraces Robinson as a conscientious missionary, outraged by the injustices he witnessed. The name-giving ceremonies, Reynolds claims, were an attempt to replace the derogatory names conferred by hostile settlers with more others with more dignity. Robinson’s Christian belief in the brotherhood and equality of all men contrasted with the polygenetic views that were coming into currency whereby different branches of humanity were distinguished and ranked – with the British ascendant of course. This is not to say that Robinson was unaffected by the early Victorian emphasis on status and respectability: his career was an perpetual struggle to maintain and boost his own standing both in the colonies and with the Colonial Office, and the seating arrangements in the church services he organized reflected an acute consciousness of gradations of status.
Cassandra Pybus’ essay ‘A Self Made Man’ is less complimentary, portraying Robinson as a vain-glorious, manipulative man who carefully massaged his own image. She introduces as a counter-point Gilbert Robertson, the capital-strapped chief constable at Richmond in Tasmania, who claimed to have been the originator of the concept of a “Protector” and who put himself forward as an applicant. As she says, it is an unedifying spectacle to see
these two colonial misfits scapping over the paltry financial benefit and dubious social advantage to be got in taking credit for the almost complete destruction of a whole people (p. 109)
The final theme involves the use of the Robinson diaries through Plomley’s publication by other historians over time. Ian McFarlane in ‘N J B Plomley’s Contribution to North-West Tasmanian Regional History’ places Robinson’s account of the Cape Grim massacre against Curr’s rather self-serving account found in the Van Diemen’s Land Company papers, and finds that Robinson’s estimate of 40 deaths (rather than Curr’s admission to 3) is likely to be correct. Patrick Brantlinger’s paper ‘King Billy’s Bones: Colonial Knowledge Production in Nineteenth-Century Tasmania’ compares Robinson’s account with James Bonwick’s history The Last of the Tasmanians written in 1870 and overlaid by later-Victorian ideas of racial superiority, craniotomy and scientific measurement. John Connor in ‘Recording the Human Face of War: Robinson and Frontier Conflict’ uses Robinson’s observations on warrior behaviour and weaponry to conceptualise Aboriginal resistance as ‘war’. Rebe Taylor’s paper ‘Reliable Mr Robinson and the Controversial Dr Jones’ examines the archaeologist Rhys Jones’ development of the regression theory that Aborigines lost the ability to fish and light fires- a suggestion repeated more recently by Jared Diamond and Keith Windschuttle- a shadowy, rejected commentator whose influence (and notoriety) pervades the book.
I’m wary of celebratory and clear-cut history with simple “goodies” and “baddies”. I’m glad that the Robinson diaries are ambiguous and contradictory, and that he himself is a flawed man who, even at the time, did not fit comfortably into his society. And I’m pleased too, that the discussion continues about what we as historians and Australians do with such a tragic, conflicted story. Plomley’s Friendly Mission and the diaries it makes available are an ur-text that is mined again and again by authors- Richard Flanagan in Wanting, Robert Drewe in The Savage Crow, Mudrooroo in Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World, Matthew Kneale in English Passengers; Nicholas Shakespeare In Tasmania; Cassandra Pybus in Community of Thieves, among others. It’s like a scab that we need to keep picking; an itch that we need to scratch; a wound that has not yet healed.
It’s hard not to instantly compare Mary Alexandra Agner ’s new chapbook, The Doors of the Body (Mayapple Press, 2009) to Transformations by Anne Sexton. Sexton’s book retold many popular fairy tales, while Agner’s collection dives much deeper, exploring the voices often silenced in women’s history, folklore and myth.
These voices are thoughtful, intelligent, and assertive. Sometimes, they are sad, but they are always strong. For instance, in “Ellen” we read the story of Helen of Troy says she ”had to change my name and cut my hair.” In “Minerva,” we see the goddess who “sprung fully formed, they say, the spitting image/with spear for stand in phallus and an owlet/to hold my wisdom, since my little female/noggin couldn’t hold the liquid measure” face her father to say “You never asked if I had longings/exceeding your narrow-minded need for power.”
It would be misleading, however, to say that Agner just uses classic mythology as a starting point of all her stories. Fairy tales are present, as well as history. My favorite poem, “The Harvest I Desire” makes references to the symbolism of apples (from various sources) where the persona says, “I know my ancestors/the wicked stepmother still plots, and Eve/has seen this fall before.”
What is the most amazing thing, however, about Agner’s collection, is the lyrical voice in each and everyone of her poems. Her female characters are not just telling stories, they are singing. When you are done reading this collection, you will know more than just stories. You will have read a musical retelling of women’s history.
Mary Peason’s newest The Miles Between is taking a blog tour this summer. I’m happy to be reading it on the plane today before sending it on. Here are the rules if you would love to read the newest book by Mary. I’m sure you have loved her The Adoration of Jenna Fox and A Room on Lorelei Street like I have and would LOVE to not have to wait until September to read her newest gem.
1. Read and Pass On-Each person gets a maximum of two weeks before sending it on to the person of their choice in a different town-
2. Take a picture-Take a picture of The Miles Betweenn ARC somewhere in your hometown. Then post the picture on your blog and send Mary a link.
3. The Drawing-Once you have posed a picture on your blog you will be entered in a drawing to be one of 10 people to receive a free personalized and signed copy of the final hardcover of The Miles Between.
4. Whoever has the ARC on August 20th is the last person to get it-The last person sends it to Mary’s Editor (in a postage-paid envelope that comes with the ARC) in NYC so it arrives in time for the official publication date on September 1st. Pictures will be taken of the ARCs at the famous Flatiron Building in NYC. Names will be drawn and winners announced.
How fun is that? All you have to do is post a comment and I’ll pick someone to send it on to Monday afternoon.
(fyi-the cover of the ARC is different than the published one)
Synopsis
Will climate change force a massive human migration to the Northern Rim?
How does our sense of morality arise from the structure of the brain?
What does the latest research in language acquisition tells us about the role of culture in the way we think?
What does current neurological research tell us about the nature of time?
This wide-ranging collection of never-before-published essays offers the very latest insights into the daunting scientific questions of our time. Its contributors—some of the most brilliant young scientists working today—provide not only an introduction to their cutting-edge research, but discuss the social, ethical, and philosophical ramifications of their work. With essays covering fields as diverse as astrophysics, paleoanthropology, climatology, and neuroscience. What’s Next? is a lucid and informed guide to the new frontiers of science.
Review:
Being extremely interested in social patterns, metaphysics, the human body, psychology, the universe or science in general picking up this book was a no-brainer. These essays were written for the general public, so they are not that hard to understand and are often well exemplified.
Nevertheless, some essays required me to look up some background information. It’s really not much use reading an essay about dark energy if you have no idea what quantumphysics is about or if you are not familiar with Einstein. If anything this collections prompts you to think and to learn, not merely to consume.
In the following paragraphs I’ll summarize the essays and add some personal considerations to it.
1// Laurence C. Smith: “WILL WE DECAMP FOR THE NORTHERN RIM?”
The author proclaims that due to global warming a mass population move will take place in the future. As the northern rim will gradually become a less arctic place to live many pioneers will move to these locations. Especially Northern Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia and Siberia are being named as potential new growth areas. The point of the essay is to evaluate these areas and their potential to receive large populations groups in terms of infrastructure, natural resources and appeal. Smith argues that these areas (and espacially Siberia) will definitely not become a northern utopia and that it should be our main focus to lessen the impact of global warming before we draw scenarios for the aftermath. The dice is not fully cast.
2// Christian Keysers: “MIRROR NEURONS: ARE WE ETHICAL BY NATURE”
Evolution has equipped our brains with circuits that enable us to experience what other individuals do and feel. If we see someone perform an action, the same neurons will be stimulated as when we perform the action ourselves. These neurons are being called ‘mirror neurons’. The action that we see performed by someone else will be processed by these neurons as if we are doing the action ourselves, be it to a lesser extent.
This explains why our species is ethical by nature. If you and another person are starving to death in the same physical location and you came upon a certain limited quantity of nurtition, would you then share the food or would you keep it to yourselves, knowing there may not be any more food coming. Almost any human would choose to share the food, even though you would think it lessens their chances of survival. This happens because the mirror neurons process not only your pain, but also the pain of the other person starving. Therefor it makes sense to share the food and temporarily eliminate the famine of the both of you.
How can the existence of these neurons be explained in the light of the evolution theory, survival of the fittest? Surely evolution would not allow these neurons to develop if they tend to lessen out chances of survival. It can be argued however that cooperation and altruism effectively increases our chances of survival. Someone who wants everything for himself will in most cases be isolated by whichever society they live in. Hence altruism increases your chances of survival more than egoism.
The very definition of altruism is that you perform an action that increases the chances of survival for someone else while it decreases your own chances of survival. But maybe we should limit the definition to short term ramifications because in the long term your previous altruistic deeds will improve the chances that someone will help you when you are the one in need.
3// Nick Bostrom: “HOW SHALL WE ENHANCE HUMAN BEINGS?”
Medical science promises us many interesting things, from eliminating deadly diseases to enhancing our ability to learn, from increasing our emotional well-being to slowing down the ageing process.
Positions on the ethics of human enhancement technologies can be (crudely) characterized as ranging from transhumanism to bioconservatism. Transhumanists believe that human enhancement technologies should be made widely available, that individuals should have broad discretion over which of these technologies to apply to themselves, and that parents should normally have the right to choose enhancements for their children-to-be. Bioconservatives are generally opposed to the use of technology to modify human nature. A central idea in bioconservativism is that human enhancement technologies will undermine our human dignity. To forestall a slide down the slippery slope towards an ultimately debased ‘posthuman’ state, bioconservatives often argue for broad bans on otherwise promising human enhancements. Another argument is that we should allow evolution to do what it has done since the beginning of life. It can be argued however that in these extremely rapid evolving times natural evolution no longer has the ability to catch up with the environmentel changes and that our human species should therefor intervene in the way nature has a way of fixing things. It’s definitely an interesting debate that will only grow in importance the following decennia.
4// Sean Carroll : “OUR PLACE IN AN UNNATURAL UNIVERSE”
The early universe is hot and dense; the late universe is cold and dilute. If the universe is constantly changing, then why aren’t our laws of physics?
Many theories that surfaced in the 20th century make a lot of sense and explain a lot of things about our universe: quantum physics, theory of relativity, partical physics, vacuum energy,… Still not everything adds up. This essay is rather technical and will require some additional reading for most people without a science degree. Do we have to speak of a multiverse instead a universe? Are conditions and the laws of physics in different parts of the universe different to the extent that life is only possible in this galaxy? Why was the universe not always in a condition of high entropy?
5// Stephon H. S. Alexander: “JUST WHAT IS DARK ENERGY?”
Dark energy, itself directly unobservable, is the most bewildering substance known, the only “stuff” that acts both on subatomic scales and across the largest distances in the cosmos.
The cosmological constant was first proposed by Einstein as a mechanism to obtain a stable solution of the gravitational field equation that would lead to a static universe, effectively using dark energy to balance gravity. It was an unproven factor however that was necessary to explain his theory of relativity. Observations made by Edwin Hubble showed that the universe appears to be expanding and not static at all, promping Einstein to refer to the ‘cosmological constant’ as his biggest failure. Later however, as the result of supernova observations, it became clear that the universe was not just expanding, but expanding at an accelerating rate. This can only be explained by the presence of dark energy, a cosmological constant. It appears now that Einstein was right after all about the presence of this constant, although he attributed a different role to it.
6// Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: “DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL BRAIN IN ADOLESCENCE”
Using modern brain-imaging techniques, scientists are discovering that the human brain does indeed change well beyond early childhood, especially in the area of the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is a large area that determines our cognitive capabilities. It’s also a part of our social brain, the network of brain areas that is involved in understanding other people. The changes are especially notable at the beginning of adolescence. So the changes in social cognition we experience during that period should not be attributed to a hormonal evolution alone. This implicates that the environment in which we grow up during adolesence has considerable importance for the way our brain develops. For example, this could explain why adolescents who smoke marihuana are more prone to develop schizophrenia.
