| Summary: | The indiscreet Charm of Things: from Consul’s Booklet to hydrocarbons Alchemy
This essay intends to investigate the way our perception and use of objects has been changing, by making reference to a series of literary works: from the 18th and 19th “triumphant middle class” – the one of some of Thomas Mann’s pages – preserving and revering objects and surrounding themselves with things intended to last over time, to the objects displayed in the shop windows of the magasins de nouveautés described by Zola, to the bulimic hoarding of soulless things intended to be used and thrown away in a flash, described in Don De Lillo’s novel, Rumore Bianco, where this bulimic hoarding seems meant to exorcise the anguish of death.
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