{"id":255136,"date":"2007-08-27T19:41:21","date_gmt":"2007-08-27T19:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2007\/08\/27\/simenon-in-the-philadelphia-inquirer\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:38:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:38:44","slug":"simenon-in-the-philadelphia-inquirer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2007\/08\/27\/simenon-in-the-philadelphia-inquirer\/","title":{"rendered":"Simenon in the Philadelphia Inquirer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Wilson’s review<\/a> of Simenon’s The Engagement<\/i> is pretty much just a plot summary, but it does point to the aspect of the book that I found most intriguing:<\/p>\n

\n

Human beings, as portrayed in this novel, range narrowly from the merely ordinary and banal to the mean-spirited, bitter, and grasping. What makes it bearable to read about them is the sense that no grand statement is being attempted: This is just one group of people behaving in a particular way under certain specific circumstances. They represent only themselves, not humanity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Along with Mark Binelli, I’ll be co-hosting an online book club<\/a> for this title starting next week. I’m really glad I finally started reading Simenon (hopefully we’ll be posting a review of Red Lights<\/i> soon), and as a short (135 pages), gripping book, it’s worth picking up a copy of The Engagement<\/i> and joining in on the message boards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Wilson’s review of Simenon’s The Engagement is pretty much just a plot summary, but it does point to the aspect of the book that I found most intriguing: Human beings, as portrayed in this novel, range narrowly from the merely ordinary and banal to the mean-spirited, bitter, and grasping. What makes it bearable to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[4246,1836,106,1646,2636,1926,146],"class_list":["post-255136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-book-club","tag-cwp","tag-reading-the-world","tag-review","tag-simenon","tag-the-engagement","tag-words-without-borders"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328426,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255136\/revisions\/328426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}