{"id":266116,"date":"2008-11-18T15:35:36","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T15:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2008\/11\/18\/latest-review-customer-service\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:10:10","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:10:10","slug":"latest-review-customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2008\/11\/18\/latest-review-customer-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Review: Customer Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our latest review<\/a> is a piece I wrote about Benoit Duteurtre’s Customer Service<\/em><\/a> (translated from the French by Bruce Benderson), which is part of Melville House Press’s fantastic Contemporary Art of the Novella series.<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s a pretty funny book that a lot of people will be able to relate to:<\/p>\n

\n

The novella opens with the hapless narrator leaving his cell phone in a taxi. In his mind, this is an easy enough problem to solve\u2014all he has to do is get a replacement phone and he\u2019ll be on his way. For anyone who\u2019s ever dealt with a cell phone company (i.e., everyone), it\u2019s never that simple. As the narrator finds our, the new phone will cost four times as much as the original, and without his SIM<\/span> card, he won\u2019t be able to keep his phone number, and besides, his account doesn\u2019t allow for a replacement phone\u2014he\u2019ll have to open a new account and pay for both until the original contract expires.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Refusing to give in to this insanity, he decides upon another approach\u2014getting in touch with Leslie Delmare, Director of Customer Service, who had sent him a letter granting him \u201cpreferred customer\u201d status, which must count for something, right?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

“Once I\u2019d arrived at this third level in the pyramid, however, I understood that I couldn\u2019t climb any higher: The middle manager tried to dodge my request; then, seeing that I wouldn\u2019t give up, explained to me in a patient voice that Leslie Delmare, in charge of customer service, didn\u2019t exist. It was just a name invented for the signature. The only person who could take care of my problem was imaginary. This woman\u2019s words threw me back, mind ricocheting, to all those powerless operators who couldn\u2019t make the slightest decision but were forced just to repeat the phrases they\u2019d been taught.” [Click here<\/a> for the rest of the review.]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our latest review is a piece I wrote about Benoit Duteurtre’s Customer Service (translated from the French by Bruce Benderson), which is part of Melville House Press’s fantastic Contemporary Art of the Novella series. It’s a pretty funny book that a lot of people will be able to relate to: The novella opens with the […]<\/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":[67456],"tags":[16436,16646,16446,1836,2816,1646],"class_list":["post-266116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-benoit-duteurtre","tag-bruce-benderson","tag-customer-service","tag-cwp","tag-melville-house","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266116","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=266116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313826,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266116\/revisions\/313826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}