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58 pages 1 hour read

Hervé Le Tellier, Transl. Adriana Hunter

The Anomaly

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020

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Symbols & Motifs

Red Lego Block

Victor Miesel always carries around a red Lego block. The original brick was part of a castle Victor was building with his father, who died before it was completed. Victor keeps the brick to honor his father and their unfinished work. It is significant that the object chosen to symbolize the ostensibly unique bond between Miesel and his father is a Lego brick: a nondescript, mass-produced object designed to be interchangeable with millions of identical counterparts, something as far from the concept of a unique and irreplaceable human soul as it’s possible to get. During his life, Victor has lost the brick twice; both times, he purchased a new brick and continued to treat it as if it were the original. The object’s physical connection to his father is severed, but it retains meaning for him as the “memory of a memory” (21). The Lego brick recalls the famous “ship of Theseus” thought experiment, used by philosophers for centuries to illustrate the paradox of consistent identity over time: According to Plutarch, Theseus’s ship was preserved for posterity by replacing rotten planks with new ones, so that eventually none of the original planks remained. The question then was whether it was the same ship or a different one—and by extension, whether a person who has been altered by years of experience and whose body cells have died and regenerated many times over can still be considered the same person. Victor treats both the original brick and the replacement with the same importance, since both have been assigned the same meaning—as a memento of the lost father. This is a demonstration of what the philosopher Philomedius means when he argues that living in a simulation is no less real.

When the Air France 006 anomaly duplicates the brick, Victor snaps the two identical bricks together. That moment symbolizes the merging of the two Victors into one (since Victor March committed suicide). But it also acknowledges that two objects can represent the same truth. This is key to the theme of doubles in the novel; though separate and identical, each double of an Air France 006 passenger is no less real and no more significant than the other, because they both carry in their physical existence the same memory, and they are both the objects of the same love of others.

Victør Miesel’s The Anomaly

Both Victor March and Victor June write The Anomaly, but they are entirely different books. Victor June writes what is implied to be the same book as Le Tellier’s The Anomaly, and Victor March writes a non-narrative, stream-of-consciousness memoir triggered by his experience on Air France 006. Only the latter is actually titled The Anomaly within the novel. Victor June’s novel is thoughtfully and painstakingly constructed, but Victor March’s is written in a fevered haze, as if he were taking dictation from some higher consciousness. Victor June uses metafiction in the style of Italo Calvino to interrogate the nature of fiction. Victor March muses about the meaning of life. The difference emphasizes the difference between the two versions of the same person, suggesting that Victor March experienced something transformative.

Victor March’s The Anomaly is made up of existential observations that reflect the author’s realization that he does not matter—arguably that he realizes he is a copy or a simulation, though this is never stated outright. The book is incoherent in its message and considered trite by critics, but it turns out to be popular because it expresses a feeling of meaninglessness that many people in the post-flight 006 world share, one that is otherwise inexpressible in language. It also seems to be influential beyond normal books. Like Robert Chambers’s The King in Yellow or David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Miesel’s The Anomaly is a fiction within the fiction that inspires change in its characters. For example, when André Vannier begins to feel meaningless in Lucie’s eyes, his writing begins to sound like that of the book.

Betty the Frog

Betty is the name of Sophia’s toad. Her amphibiousness symbolizes similar qualities in human lives: the ability to lead a double life and, like a salamander, the ability to go dormant between seasons. In the first Sophia chapter, Liam finds Betty dehydrated by the space heater. She had been missing for weeks and looks dead until she is revitalized by water. Sophia mentions that salamanders can enter a state of suspended animation while waiting for rain. This survival ability is meaningful for many of the characters: the Kleffmans weather Clark’s abuse when he is home, waiting for him to be reassigned again; the ficus in Paul Markle’s office is on the brink of death before it is watered, and David March is on the brink of death when David June appears.

Many characters also lead double lives; Blake literally lives two lives, while Sophia compartmentalizes her life to avoid thinking about the moments when Clark abuses her. André March and André June split their lives and belongings into two, and many of the passengers must change their identities as they emerge from their previous lives into new lives altered by Air France 006, a sort of life cycle metamorphosis.

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