{"id":1212,"date":"1998-09-15T15:04:45","date_gmt":"1998-09-15T15:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1212"},"modified":"2012-04-25T15:05:19","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T15:05:19","slug":"corrupting-dr-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1212","title":{"rendered":"Corrupting Dr. Nice"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>Corrupting Dr. Nice<\/em> by             John Kessel<\/h3>\n<p>Nine people attended the discussion of John Kessel&#8217;s             <em>Corrupting Dr. Nice<\/em>. This is a time travel novel             featuring elements of screwball comedy, romance, and             social commentary. The plot involves a wealthy             scientist who travels back in time to get a dinosaur             specimen, and the complications that arise when he             encounters a father-and-daughter con artist team in             ancient Jerusalem on his way back to the             21<sup>st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n<p>We all found the book readable and slickly written, and             none of us had any trouble finishing it. We thought the             story was clever and funny. Kessel&#8217;s concept of time             travel was original and well-developed. The characters             were mostly stock roles from screwball comedies, and we             could imagine Cary Grant and Katharine<!--more--> Hepburn starring             in a movie version. The story features variations on             many stock situations, with a courtroom scene near the             end in which famous orators from the past are arguing             for each side of a legal case. The sports fans in our             group enjoyed the clever scene where Pontius Pilate             attends a professional baseball game.<\/p>\n<p>While the book offers a lot to like and has no serious             problems, we didn&#8217;t feel it had much of an edge to its             social commentary. This was particularly surprising to             those who&#8217;d read Kessel&#8217;s biting earlier novel, <em>Good             News From Outer Space<\/em>. Still, <em>Corrupting Dr.             Nice<\/em> is a lot of fun, and we&#8217;d recommend it to             anyone looking for a pleasant diversion.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212; A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Corrupting Dr. Nice by John Kessel Nine people attended the discussion of John Kessel&#8217;s Corrupting Dr. Nice. This is a time travel novel featuring elements of screwball comedy, romance, and social commentary. The plot involves a wealthy scientist who travels back in time to get a dinosaur specimen, and the complications that arise when he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions\/1214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}