ABSTRACT
Georges Perec’s novel Les Choses (Things: A Story of the Sixties), published in 1965, has been interpreted as an account of the conflicting emotional universe of human beings fascinated with things and caught in the throes of mass consumption. The behavioural traits of the main characters of the novel, Jérôme and Sylvie, will be compared with that of homo oeconomicus postulated by economists. It is contended here that an institutional economic and interdisciplinary interpretation of the novel as an adventure of ‘primitive hunter-gatherers’ in late modernity amidst an advanced consumption culture works much better than a neoclassical economic reading.
