In the autumn of 1965, a twenty-nine-year-old Georges Perec published his début novel. Short and strange, “Things: A Story of the Sixties” follows Sylvie and Jérôme, a young Parisian mates who enactment successful the burgeoning tract of marketplace research, and beryllium successful a imperishable frenzy of hyper-specific worldly desires. They privation to furnish their flat with fitted carpets, a achromatic leather sofa, tartan-upholstered benches, “allegedly rustic tables.” They favour apparel that seems posh and British. Throughout the novel, the 2 characters are fused into a azygous entity—we ne'er perceive them speak—and they determination done a satellite spangled with commercialized temptations, insistently and precisely identified.
Like galore earlier them, Sylvie and Jérôme mistake their pursuit of sensation for a pursuit of knowledge, and judge themselves to beryllium acquiring a benignant of legibility—to others and to themselves. Theirs is, successful effect, “the astir idiotic, the astir mean predicament successful the world.” By the novel’s penultimate page, the couple’s conception of happiness—a imperishable equilibrium betwixt means and desires—has proved intolerable to maintain, and they are en way to Bordeaux, wherever they person taken executive-level jobs astatine a second-tier advertizing agency. The publication ends with a benignant of defeated sigh: they are but “tame pets, faithfully reflecting a satellite which taunted them.”
Still, Sylvie and Jérôme would beryllium envied by Anna and Tom, a brace of likewise obedient animals astatine the halfway of the svelte caller caller “Perfection” (New York Review Books). In the acknowledgment, its author, the Italian writer Vincenzo Latronico, calls “Perfection” a tribute to “Things,” and his protagonists are naïvely wistful for the past. “Previous generations,” Anna and Tom are convinced, “had had a overmuch easier clip moving retired who they were and what they stood for.”
Like Sylvie and Jérôme, Anna and Tom determination arsenic one: they speech neither to each different nor to anyone else, and question done a satellite littered with the supposedly-quiet-but-actually-quite-loud taste signifiers of intellectualized upward mobility (houseplants, hardwood floors, unread backmost issues of this magazine). Latronico documents their decisions and demurrals with an elegant proportionality of sly commentary to detached reportage, a ratio that Perec erstwhile described arsenic “passionate coldness” and credited to Flaubert.
Latronico’s conceit is clever and volition delight anyone acquainted with his root material, but his execution is ingenious. In lieu of the Left Bank successful the nineteen-sixties, we person Berlin successful the twenty-tens, wherever Anna and Tom person moved from an unnamed state successful confederate Europe to prosecute an art-adjacent beingness benignant and careers successful graphic design. Like the laptops connected which they enactment and play, Anna and Tom’s aesthetic preferences are ever connected the brink of obsolescence, and checking for updates is simply a full-time, if passive, occupation. Just arsenic Sylvie and Jérôme’s enactment successful mid-century advertizing was a occupation that “history had chosen for them,” Anna and Tom’s presumption arsenic creatives (“a word adjacent they recovered vague and jarring”) is “a earthy effect of the discourse successful which they had grown up.” As teen-agers who came of property with the internet, they doinked astir connected the machine and had amusive doing so; arsenic adults, they bash for wealth what they erstwhile did retired of passion. “This was a fact,” Latronico writes. “From this information they concluded that they had turned their passionateness into a job. This was a deduction.” (Also a deduction: that his novel’s agility successful English owes overmuch to its talented translator, Sophie Hughes.)
Anna and Tom are not happy, adjacent though thing atrocious ever happens to them. Their worst misfortune is the cancellation of a freelance contract, which sets them backmost a fewer weeks financially. Nobody gets sick. Nobody dies. They person nary dependents. They are truthful insulated from catastrophe and discomfort that they person to question these things out. For a little spell, they articulation the originative people of Berlin successful mobilizing connected behalf of a caller influx of migrants, whose arrival, successful the summertime of 2015, they archetypal registry not connected the streets of the metropolis wherever they unrecorded but arsenic a chromatic displacement connected their machine screens, the acquainted beige of Middle Eastern wars replaced by the metallic of capsized dinghies amid Mediterranean azure. Anna and Tom find it hard to beryllium useful, and though they are driven to assistance by a consciousness of civic obligation—“of course”—they are besides motivated by “the feeling that thing was taking spot astir them they didn’t privation to miss, an outstanding rendezvous with history.”
But their full beingness is organized astir and enabled by a past that mostly remains successful their peripheral vision. They enactment astatine a occupation with nary acceptable hours successful a state whose connection they bash not speak. They unrecorded successful a light-flooded, plant-filled flat whose determination was determined decades earlier by the Allied bombings, though “it ne'er occurred to them.” They question frequently, and, erstwhile they do, the costs are partially offset by the information that they tin rent retired their enviable flat for a 100 and eighteen euros a night, “plus the interest to screen the Ukrainian cleaner, paid done a French gig system institution that files its taxes successful Ireland; positive the committee for the online hosting platform, with offices successful California but tax-registered successful the Netherlands; positive different chopped for the online payments system, which has its office successful Seattle but runs its European subsidiary retired of Luxembourg; positive the metropolis taxation imposed by Berlin.”
Like “Things,” “Perfection” contains nary dialogue, the characters existing astir post-verbally, arsenic though the images they make and curate and devour connected societal media mightiness talk for them. But bash they?
An ovum became much celebrated than the pope. A highly contagious microorganism raged done West Africa. A billionaire poured a bucket of crystal connected his head. A manner marque exploited East Asian sweatshop workers. A young pistillate recorded each the times she was catcalled. Two African Americans were killed by the police. A antheral went astir filming archetypal kisses. A level vanished en way to Beijing. A pistillate was beautiful. An flat afloat of plants was beautiful. A vegan quiche was beautiful. A kid needed wealth for chemo. Time disappeared.
In “Things,” this barrage of stimuli takes the signifier of page-filling questions that Sylvie and Jérôme airs to prospective customers:
Why are pure-suction vacuum cleaners selling truthful poorly? What bash radical of humble root deliberation of chicory? Do you similar ready-made mashed potato, and if so, why? . . . Do radical similar food successful squeezy tubes? Are you for oregon against nationalist transport? . . . Would you, Madam, similar to rent your country to a Black? . . . Describe a antheral who likes pasta.
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