The cherry plum test

Sitting at my desk at work, eating green grapes and sinking, quickly, into the maddeningly pretentious and incredibly delightful novel known in English as The Elegance of the Hedgehog (trans. Alison Anderson), I read the following:

The cherry plum test is extraordinary for its disarming clarity. It derives its power from a universal observation: when man bites into the fruit, at last he understands. What does he understand? Everything. He understands how the human species, given only to survival, slowly matured and arrived one fine day at an intuition of pleasure, the vanity of all the artificial appetites that divert one from one’s initial aspiration toward the virtues of simple and sublime things, the pointlessness of discourse, the slow and terrible degradation of multiple worlds from which no one can escape and, in spite of all that, the wonderful sweetness of the senses when they conspire to teach mankind pleasure and the terrifying beauty of Art.

The cherry plum test is held in my kitchen. I place the fruit and the book on the Formica table, and as I pick up the former to taste it, I also start the latter. If each resists the powerful onslaught of the other, if the cherry plum fails to make me doubt the text and if the text is unable to spoil the fruit, then I know that I am in the presence of a worthwhile and, why not say it, exceptional undertaking, for there are very few works that have not dissolved – proven both ridiculous and complacent – into the extraordinary succulence of the little golden plums. (pp. 54-55)

I cannot claim that the green grapes currently making their way into my belly are as good as these cherry plums (I've never eaten a cherry plum). I can say that in my current Barbery/grape cage match, neither is coming out a clear victor.

In other words, I am thoroughly enjoying myself.