Meeting Dates:
2/19, 3/19, 4/09
In Person at The Center for Fiction

“It is on the basis of luxury that the lost simplicity is consumed.”

Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society

In this reading group, we’ll consider three novels that cast an anthropological gaze at the objects and rituals with which urban couples enact their desires for stability and meaning. We’ll start with Georges Perec’s Things, his classic short novel from the 1960s, which offers a near-inventory of the lives of a Parisian couple. Our second novel, Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, refigures Perec’s novel in the era of Instagram. We’ll then examine Aysegül Savas’ The Anthropologists, which, like Perfection, takes up the everyday lives of a millennial couple attempting to cultivate urban domesticity in the face of the homogenizing forces of globalization.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Things by Georges Perec

What to expect from this reading group: This group is seminar-style and participant-driven, with some initial structure and observations to focus and warm up our conversations.

Reading List:

• Session I: Things by Georges Perec

• Session II: Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

• Session III: The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas