{"id":146524,"date":"2020-08-05T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=146524"},"modified":"2020-08-05T11:13:44","modified_gmt":"2020-08-05T15:13:44","slug":"jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jean-Patrick Manchette, 1967.<\/p><\/div>\n

They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, <\/em>Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each <\/em>Isolato living on a separate continent of his own.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Herman Melville, Moby-Dick<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Herman Melville called them isolatoes<\/em>\u2014the word he coined for those among us who don\u2019t have much truck with fellow humans. The bonds of society, except in odd and extenuating circumstances, are not really for them. Love, marriage, family seem as strange, distant institutions, things one might observe with a notebook in the other hand. At best, there are a couple of old comrades accumulated on life\u2019s journey to whom one might turn when things go south. For isolatoes, the most constant of companions are those voices inside the head.<\/p>\n

Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s protagonists are isolatoes. Georges Gerfault in Three to Kill<\/em>, Julie Ballanger in The Mad and the Bad<\/em>, Martin Terrier in The Prone Gunman<\/em>, Aime\u0301e Joubert in Fatale<\/em>: windowless monads, all of them. Memorable, violent, alone. <\/p>\n

Euge\u0300ne Tarpon, Manchette\u2019s private eye in No Room at the Morgue<\/em>, is among these nations of one. Like many fictional private eyes he\u2019s come to the end of his rope; in fact, as the novel begins, he\u2019s already thrown his badge in the river. Only an unlikely client\u2014is there any other kind?\u2014coming through the door puts his retirement plans on ice.<\/p>\n

You perhaps know (and Manchette certainly knew) Dashiell Hammett\u2019s Flitcraft story, an existential parable embedded within The Maltese Falcon<\/em>. It contains the sentence \u201cHe adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.\u201d In No Room at the Morgue<\/em> it goes the other way: As we meet him, Tarpon has submitted to a certain quiescence. He has adjusted himself to a life where beams no longer fall. And then one does. Providing him with a headache, us with a narrative.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

As is so often the case with Manchette, the shadow of May \u201968 hovers over all, much as the shadow of the Occupation hovers over the novels of Patrick Modiano. It\u2019s what our Lacanian friends would call \u201cthe structuring absence.\u201d The France of Euge\u0300ne Tarpon is littered with the debris of failed revolt. If those who make half a revolution only dig their own graves, Tarpon\u2019s journey is a slow stumble across that graveyard: his Paris is a Pe\u0300re Lachaise of the soul.<\/p>\n

Yet Tarpon is no soixante-huitard<\/em>; rather, he\u2019s a retired (or cashiered) gendarme who killed a militant during a protest (imagine a Sam Spade who, like Hammett, had previously worked as a Pinkerton but, unlike Hammett, had also been a strikebreaker). When we meet him in the \u201cfifth floor, no elevator\u201d flat near Les Halles that serves as his home, his office, his life, he\u2019s drinking pastis straight, his bank account has cratered, he\u2019s within twenty-four hours of going home to Mom in the provinces. The adventure\/misadventure into which he is then swirled\u2014with about the same degree of agency here as Dorothy when a twister swept her to Oz\u2014takes him to that most Manchettian of locales, an abandoned house in the country, where pro-Palestinian rebrands and American mobsters clash by night. Tarpon\u2019s attitude toward the former mirrors Manchette\u2019s own\u2014as he wrote in his diary, \u201cthe collapse of leftism into terrorism is the collapse of the revolution into spectacle.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the carnage of the countryside, Tarpon makes his bloodied way back to Paris\u2014to what might nominally be called civilization\u2014only to be followed, abducted, drugged, shot at, and stabbed by a farrago of gangsters, pornographers, miscreants, sociopaths, and killers. In this upside-down world, the nice guys turn out to be the cops. They don\u2019t beat you up unless there\u2019s a reason for them to do so.<\/p>\n

For all of the gimlet-eyed precision with which Manchette observes human activity in the post-\u201968 landscape, he always gives us a character or two who behave well, and with empathy for their fellow beings. In Three to Kill<\/em> it was Raguse, the kindly alpine recluse who takes in our protagonist. In\u00a0No Room at the Morgue<\/em> it\u2019s the journalist Haymann, who helps Tarpon when he doesn\u2019t really have to, and the upstairs neighbor, the elderly tailor Stanislavski, who has never harmed a soul, and suffers the consequences. Manchette uses these figures to cast in high relief the bad faith and worse behavior of the rest of us, caught in the convulsions of late, or one may say after-hours, capitalism.<\/p>\n

The language he uses to depict these convulsions only heightens the terror and the absurdity\u2014Andre\u0301 Breton would surely recognize in Manchette a fellow practitioner of humeur noire<\/em>. As Tarpon narrates, \u201cI was making up theories in my head: Was Haymann an Israeli agent? And was it in fact Memphis Charles they\u2019d tried to assassinate the other night? My theories were collapsing one by one, but I started constructing them all over again. At the same time, I was dreaming of steak frites. And it was getting mixed up in my theories. Be\u0301arnaise sauce was dripping down the faces of Palestinians. In my head, I mean. In my head.\u201d Or, more offhandedly: \u201cMemphis Charles had dragged the American who was still alive into the workshop and she was attaching him to the pipes. Life goes on, like the song says.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, from time to time\u2014and this is what makes No Room at the Morgue<\/em> so poignant\u2014we\u2019re also allowed a window into the heart, an access given legitimacy by the fact that it occurs so rarely and against a landscape so invariably gray. Here we have a mobster who inexplicably breaks down in tears. We don\u2019t understand it but are moved. And then, later, we do understand it and are moved yet more deeply. For Manchette, these moments of fragility, of tenderness, aren\u2019t moments of weakness. But they\u2019re not moments of strength, either.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

No Room at the Morgue<\/em> and its sequel, Que d\u2019os!<\/em>, are the only two of Manchette\u2019s novels to feature a private eye as protagonist. Though in Manchette there\u2019s never a shortage of killers for hire, killers for the hell of it, casual psychotics, mercenaries, and the corruption of each and every institution, there are relatively few police in his policiers, and very little mystery about the who in whodunit. The Tarpon novels are in some sense a throwback to a time when the genre was more tightly defined, its tropes less problematic. We\u2019ve got a down-at-heels PI here, and bad guys, and a femme-more-or-less-fatale, and a couple of cops either of whom could be played by Lino Ventura. But Manchette certainly isn\u2019t slumming, or doing a genre turn to please his fans. As Manchette asks, \u201cWhat do you do when you re-do [the classic American crime novels] at a distance\u2014distant because the moment of that something is long gone? The American-style polar<\/em> had its day. Writing in 1970 meant taking a new social reality into account, but it also meant acknowledging that the polar<\/em>-form was finished because its time was finished: re-employing an obsolete form implies employing it referentially, honoring it by criticizing it, exaggerating it, distorting it from top to bottom.\u201d Or as he put it more bluntly (and more flamboyantly): \u201cThe overtures of the \u2018neo-detective novel\u2019 have been progressively conquered by literary hacks (of Art) or by Gorbachev-loving Stalino Trotskyist racketeers.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

No Room at the Morgue<\/em> is, then, a story that begins with Marx and ends in Freud, stopping along the way at Wilhelm Reich. In some sense the novel is an omnium-gatherum, a cabinet of wonders containing all of Manchette\u2019s favored objects: a broke, alienated protagonist with a great future behind him; men at the very end of their tether; women in dissociation and distress; a supporting cast of radicals, terrorists, antiterrorists, libertines, mobsters\u2014isolatoes all!\u2014whose mental state could at best be called fragile. All of them driving around the high-numbered arrondissements in beater Peugeots and Simcas that, like their drivers, could at any moment be taking their last breaths.<\/p>\n

In Preston Sturges\u2019s sublime The Palm Beach Story<\/em>, Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) is tracking his wife (Claudette Colbert), who\u2019s decamped to Florida. Jeffers follows. He finds a sleeping-car porter who was working the train that brought his wife to Palm Beach. Jeffers asks of the porter, \u201cWas she alone?\u201d The porter responds, \u201cWell, you might practically say she\u2019s alone. The gentleman who got off with her gave me ten cents from New York to Jacksonville: she\u2019s alone, but she don\u2019t know it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So many of Manchette\u2019s protagonists are exactly that: they\u2019re alone, but they don\u2019t know it. Or at least don\u2019t know it until the events of the narrative hammer home, with impeccable vengeance, that bleak and final truth. But in No Room at the Morgue<\/em>, Euge\u0300ne Tarpon is alone, knows it, makes no bones about it. He doesn\u2019t see solitude as something to be remedied\u2014rather, it\u2019s a given, like the beer he drinks, the cassoulet he eats right out of the can, the cherished, rusted Browning that jams at the instant of need.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Howard A. Rodman is the author of the novels\u00a0<\/em>Destiny Express\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>The Great Eastern\u00a0and the screenplays<\/em> Joe Gould\u2019s Secret and\u00a0<\/em>Savage Grace. He is a past president of the Writers Guild of America West and a Chevalier de l\u2019Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.<\/em><\/p>\n

From <\/em>No Room at the Morgue<\/a>, by Jean-Patrick Manchette, translated from the French by Alyson Waters, published by New York Review Books next week. Afterword copyright \u00a9 2020 by Howard A. Rodman.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No man is an island\u2014except in the novels of Jean-Patrick Manchette, whose characters are alone but don\u2019t know it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2028,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders by Howard A. Rodman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"No man is an island\u2014except in the novels of Jean-Patrick Manchette, whose characters are alone but don\u2019t know it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders by Howard A. Rodman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 5, 2020 \u2013 No man is an island\u2014except in the novels of Jean-Patrick Manchette, whose characters are alone but don\u2019t know it.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-08-05T13:00:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-08-05T15:13:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"667\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Howard A. Rodman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Howard A. Rodman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Howard A. Rodman\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/70205f4592df1a477d1b4bb6a6a66c67\"},\"headline\":\"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-05T13:00:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-05T15:13:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/\"},\"wordCount\":1648,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/\",\"name\":\"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders by Howard A. Rodman\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-05T13:00:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-05T15:13:44+00:00\",\"description\":\"No man is an island\u2014except in the novels of Jean-Patrick Manchette, whose characters are alone but don\u2019t know it.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/70205f4592df1a477d1b4bb6a6a66c67\",\"name\":\"Howard A. Rodman\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cc3d0fdd9a5a228b92afa5ba2426226bb5786ce5cfe54785bae4edd72440e322?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cc3d0fdd9a5a228b92afa5ba2426226bb5786ce5cfe54785bae4edd72440e322?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Howard A. Rodman\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/harodman\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders by Howard A. Rodman","description":"No man is an island\u2014except in the novels of Jean-Patrick Manchette, whose characters are alone but don\u2019t know it.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders by Howard A. Rodman","og_description":"August 5, 2020 \u2013 No man is an island\u2014except in the novels of Jean-Patrick Manchette, whose characters are alone but don\u2019t know it.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2020-08-05T13:00:27+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-08-05T15:13:44+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1000,"height":667,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Howard A. Rodman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Howard A. Rodman","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/"},"author":{"name":"Howard A. Rodman","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/70205f4592df1a477d1b4bb6a6a66c67"},"headline":"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders","datePublished":"2020-08-05T13:00:27+00:00","dateModified":"2020-08-05T15:13:44+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/"},"wordCount":1648,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg","articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/","name":"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders by Howard A. Rodman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg","datePublished":"2020-08-05T13:00:27+00:00","dateModified":"2020-08-05T15:13:44+00:00","description":"No man is an island\u2014except in the novels of Jean-Patrick Manchette, whose characters are alone but don\u2019t know it.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/jpm-1967.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/jean-patrick-manchettes-cabinet-of-wonders\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Jean-Patrick Manchette\u2019s Cabinet of Wonders"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/70205f4592df1a477d1b4bb6a6a66c67","name":"Howard A. Rodman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cc3d0fdd9a5a228b92afa5ba2426226bb5786ce5cfe54785bae4edd72440e322?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cc3d0fdd9a5a228b92afa5ba2426226bb5786ce5cfe54785bae4edd72440e322?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Howard A. Rodman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/harodman\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146524"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146682,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146524\/revisions\/146682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}