{"id":300456,"date":"2015-02-16T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2015\/02\/16\/guys-like-me\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:12:28","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T15:12:28","slug":"guys-like-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2015\/02\/16\/guys-like-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Guys Like Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all know Paris, or at least we think we know it. The Eiffel Tower. The Latin Quarter. The Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es. The touristy stuff. In Dominique Fabre\u2019s novel, Guys Like Me<\/em>, we\u2019re shown a different side of Paris: a gray, decaying side that reflects, more than anything else, the emotional state of the storyteller, an unnamed narrator still reeling from his divorce many years ago.<\/p>\n

The novel begins as the narrator runs into an old friend, Jean, whose life has similarly stalled. With a wink and a nod they resume the friendship that they had lost years ago. We\u2019re also introduced to Marco, or Marc-Andr\u00e9, who, along with Jean, becomes the third member of this sad band of rapidly-aging, aimless men. As the novel unfolds, we learn about the narrator\u2019s divorce from Ana\u00efs, and the painful estrangement from his son, Benjamin. <\/p>\n

Early in the novel, we learn the great extent to which the narrator\u2019s mind torments him. \u201cSince my separation, I haven\u2019t had a real love affair,\u201d the narrator tells us. \u201cI don\u2019t have the strength for it anymore, I kept telling myself. But why would I need strength? How the time passes . . . Quite often, my thinking stops there, and I try to sleep immediately afterwards, because I really don\u2019t know what\u2019s waiting for me if I keep thinking.\u201d What little hope remains in his heart he\u2019s found in the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who once said there are no second acts in American life. \u201cThere are no second acts,\u201d the narrator says. \u201cBut I still believe there are, from time to time.\u201d<\/p>\n

He finds his second act in Marie, a woman he meets through an online dating website. When she begins treatment for breast cancer, the narrator finds himself once again falling in love and discovering that, despite what he has told himself, he does<\/em> have the strength for another love affair\u2014one that could last long enough to be considered a \u201csecond act.\u201d<\/p>\n

The immersive power of the novel comes from the narrator\u2019s voice. He begins each paragraph somewhere, then wanders somewhere else, jumping idea to idea, often without starting new sentences. The reader must slow down to figure out whether he\u2019s integrating dialogue into his prose or recalling something someone once said or mocking someone. But in forcing us to slow down, the author has invited us to occupy the narrator\u2019s mind perhaps more intimately than we would otherwise. <\/p>\n

By the end, we\u2019re left feeling good about the narrator\u2019s \u201csecond act,\u201d though we realize that, on some level, most of the man\u2019s life has gone by, much of it spent in some state of misery or confusion. It\u2019s easy to see how many people\u2014men, of course, but women, too\u2014can relate to guys like this narrator. After all, he does say, with his touch of dry humor, \u201cthere are only a few million of us, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all know Paris, or at least we think we know it. The Eiffel Tower. The Latin Quarter. The Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es. The touristy stuff. In Dominique Fabre\u2019s novel, Guys Like Me, we\u2019re shown a different side of Paris: a gray, decaying side that reflects, more than anything else, the emotional state of the storyteller, an unnamed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[10076,3426,59556,686,51506,54456],"class_list":["post-300456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-dominique-fabre","tag-french-literature","tag-guys-like-me","tag-howard-curtis","tag-new-vessel-press","tag-peter-biello"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300456","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\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336646,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300456\/revisions\/336646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}