Georges Perec's Les Choses (1965)

Les choses: Une histoire des années soixante (Things: A Story of the Sixties) is about er, things, and - as if peripheral subjects - Jérôme and Sylvie, who are psycho-sociologists. This is just a highfallutin term for market researchers, and doesn't pay them much, leaves them longing for things, for so many might bes, could bes, which become might have beens and could have beens, and lead to literally neverending discontentment, desires that are never accomplished, lists of things to do that will never be done.

So they leave the Parisian world of constant lack for Tunisia, but of course that just leads to more desire, and more lack. In Tunisia, they could have had, but of course didn't, so go back to Paris, where - needless to say - they can't have what they didn't have the first time.

Les choses was Georges Perec's first published novel, and earned him the Prix Renaudot. Many saw it as a criticism of Gaullist consumer society, which annoyed Perec, because it couldn't have been: it was about things promised but never granted. But after so many obscure years, Perec's name was now known, he had money coming in, could do things, could have things...

However, the next year Perec followed through, as it were, with Quel petit vélo à guidon chromé au fond de la cour? (Which Moped with Chrome-plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard?), which sank almost without trace: even David Bellos, the author of the huge biography Georges Perec: A Life in Words (London: The Harvill Press, 1995), thought that the novel written in the manner of Raymond Queneau was a good joke for only a few pages. But Perec wouldn't (couldn't) compromise his art for the things that money and popularity would bring him (in fact he found popular books positively suspicious), and went back into the shadows for several more years, when things turned out better for him, although not for long, as he died when he was still 45.  Ah, he could have...