A fierce portrait of consumer society by a literary cousin of Jacques Tati, published in the NRF in November 1960, in the midst of the triumph of the New Novel. Neither crime nor punishment in this long short story, spotted by Raymond Queneau, but a kind of grayness which underlines the depressive nature of the civilization of cars, supermarkets, advertising, household appliances, and paid holidays.
We are far from the colors that Jacques Demy gave France in the 1960s in his comedies. Rather, in the vision of the black and white films of another Jacques Tati, we see a man who meditates on his uselessness and ultimately on the stupidity and ineffectiveness of everything. The short story was written by Bernard Waller, who was married to Tati's sister, and published in The Paris Review, November 30, 1960, at the age of 25.