Fama is a fickle deity. at the turn of the 20th century, Henri Bergson was one of the most famous people in the world, and certainly the most famous philosopher. 

...

...Bergson’s philosophy, although as hard to pin down as the poetry of Mallarmé and as shimmeringly elusive as an impressionist painting...

 The Nation needs an editor and John Banville needs grammar check on his word processor.

...

 For Bergson, then, one of the chief properties of reality is its haecceity, its graspable thereness;

 haecceity
/hakˈsēədē/
noun Philosophy
noun: haecceity

    that property or quality of a thing by virtue of which it is unique or describable as “this (one).”.
        the property of being a unique and individual thing.

 In addition, Banville needs to put the thesaurus down, or read the definitions more closely.

 ...

In 1878, Bergson left the Lycée Condorcet and won entry to the École Normale Supérieure, the most exclusive university in France. ...

 It was at the École Normale Supér- ieure...

My God, this is just atrocious.