The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 17 November 2004
by Georges Perec
This is a short (105 pages), but very dense, novel that, while not necessarily specific to the 60s, expresses the boom in consumer culture that took place in the decades after World War 2. Its themes resonate even more strongly today. Jerome and Sylvie are both young recruits in the field of advertising research. They use the loose constraints of their jobs as surveyors to pursue a relaxed and youthful lifestyle of cafes, dinners with friends, and long walks with window shopping. Their lives are absorbed by the things that they would like to acquire as symbols of material success. Yet they know that to get such things, they'd have to settle in to a more mundane existence of habit and career. They do all they can to avoid that, while their friends move on, and the incorrigible yearning for things continues. Perec describes their world brilliantly, and gives an overall impression of dreamy luxury with long detailed descriptions and lists of the items that clutter Jerome and Sylvie's lives and dreams. The whole works to great effect, and today's readers may find much with which to relate here. Jerome and Sylvie plan an escape, but also remain drawn to the life that will bring them the luxuries they desire, but may find the lack of desire kind of boring. An intense little book.
(Things was recently republished by David Godine in a single volume with Perec's A Man Asleep.)
Also by Perec: [Life: A User's Manual] [A Man Asleep]