Negative Things about Things: Evaluating Materialist Critique in Georges Perec Anonymous College

Georges Perec’s novella Les Choses[1]debuted in the mid-1960s, across a cultural landscape of change, disillusionment, and frustration. The lives of the main characters in this novella show us that postwar life in Western Europe is empty and soulless. This has led some to question whether the novella is merely a critique of materialism or if it is an attempt at a larger social critique. Although there are moments in which Perec’s negotiation of materialism is more complex than a simple indictment, the traditional interpretation of Perec as anti-consumerist remains.

The fact that the English version of the novella is generally titled Things: A Story of the Sixtiescreates a perhaps unfair alignment of the novella with a certain historical and social critique. However, the text of the novel itself opens in a way that directly addresses the reader and aligns their view with the items that the narrator thinks are important: “Your eye, first of all, would glide over the grey fitted carpet in the narrow, long, and high-ceilinged corridor. Its walls would be cupboards, in light-coloured wood, with fittings of gleaming brass. Three prints…would lead to a leather curtain…”[2]This opening passage is important because of the way it draws...