Like a preconceived life that has not yet happened, that may not be possible, although it can be understood in the realms of imagination and utopia, Georges Perec (1936-1982) creates the possibility for a couple in a room that he describes in great detail; a room that favors the view of a domestic atmosphere, without great luxuries, but with a (dis)order typical of worldly knowledge: “it would be a room for the night.” But all this is nothing more than an aspiration, a desire to live so differently for the protagonists of Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965).
A file clerk at a neurophysiology research center, the young man of Jewish origin Perec was studying history and sociology when he began contributing to literary magazines such as La Nouvelle Revue Française and Les Lettres Nouvelles. At the age of 29, he won the Renaudot literary prize for Les Choses, his first novel. Through his reading, Perec already showed a remarkable cultural awareness. His most recognized influences at that time were OuLiPo: Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. But, considering that he was a defender of the nouveau roman, there were other authors he revered.
Perec seems to foreshadow the fate of the young couple: “A war of attrition was beginning, from which they would never emerge victorious.” And yet, there is a fascination with what is to come, which leaves the reader with no choice but to become more interested in him (Jérôme) and her (Sylvie) in a Paris that appears promising and unconditional for promises and dreams.
The fact that they lived far below their aspirations did not mean that they neglected one of their mundane duties: reading. Books were always present in their reality. In their illusions, even more so. Consider the following:
- On the left, in a kind of alcove, was a large, worn black leather sofa with a pale cherry wood bookcase on either side, on which books were piled up haphazardly.
- On the right, and on either side of the window, two narrow, tall bookcases held a few books…
- Further to the left, along the wall, a narrow table appeared to be crammed with books.
- Sometimes it seemed to them that a whole life could pass harmoniously within those walls covered with books… [1]
The library in the dilapidated 35-square-meter apartment was a must. But, perhaps as an exercise in rubbing shoulders with the contingency of a new life, they preferred, despite everything, to continue aspiring: “The bookcase would be made of light oak, or they would have it made.” A vain exercise in pretension, where the supreme passion, strictly speaking, is the achievement of their well-being.
But how could two people who had never experienced any other way of life have utopian dreams about those who, for certain reasons, had lived comfortably and gradually had to adapt, reluctantly, to another way of life? What could Jérôme and Sylvie possibly miss—a prerequisite for utopianism—when their only concern was survival? Although, being what they were, children of poor petty bourgeois, they had something of their ancestors in them. The narrator cannot say more about this:
They lacked tradition—in the most despicable sense of the word, perhaps—and evidence, the true joy that accompanies physical happiness, while theirs was a cerebral pleasure. All too often, what they called luxury, they liked only for the money behind it. They succumbed to the signs of wealth, loving wealth more than life itself.
Psychosociologists. With their studies in motivation and their mastery learned more from practice than from advertising theory—they read almost nothing on the subject—they asked questions and got answers. They were effective at “content analysis” for an agency. They were snobs with a strong desire to fit into a reality that excluded them. But they were persistent. They felt that there were new needs because they had some money. “In the world they lived in, it was almost a rule to always want more than you could afford.” Sylvie and Jérôme, with their differences, seemed to be the same person in comparison to the group and their collective dreams. Victims of advertising in general, they were nevertheless precursors of The Cult of Fast Fashion. Deep down, they were aware of what they were doing, of how they felt. “But they had the consolation of not being the ones who had gotten the worst of it, quite the contrary.”
When the narrator refers to an imaginary young man, who could be anyone, Perec describes the situation of the average French student in the 1960s, with the Algerian War in the background, which the couple felt did not affect them. He refers to the intimate life that awaited him as a story that had already been written, like a movie he had seen several times and, of course, did not want to live. In their search for happiness, Sylvie and Jérôme rejected romantic attitudes and political explanations: “their real life was elsewhere, in a near or distant future, also full of more subtle, more covert threats. Intangible traps, enchanted nets.” But in the present, they were witnesses to external helplessness and violence. Their images of the present tormented their dream world.
Towards the second part of Las cosas, when Sylvie agrees to become a teacher in Sfax, Tunisia, and Jérôme does not, they feel more like exiles than foreigners. The protagonists land in their reality. They cannot have everything they desire. Emptiness invades them and they seem to resign themselves to it. But does that mean they abandon their comforting images? “Time, once again, will work in their favor.” Will they sell their books?
What an exercise in distancing and critical and accurate commitment Georges Perec achieves with his first novel, about which he is said to have said: “Those who imagined that I was condemning consumer society understood nothing of my book.”
[1] All quotations from Las cosas. Una historia de los años sesenta (Les Choses) are from the Cocuyo collection, translated by Jesús López Pacheco and designed by Raúl Martínez, Instituto del libro/ La Habana, Cuba, 1969. 10,000 copies were printed. It is very revealing how much paper there was and what other interests there were; for example, Valle-Inclán’s Sonata de primavera and Sonata de estío consisted of 20,000 copies, while Vsevolod Ivanov’s El tren blindado 14-69 had 30,000 copies printed.
