Tom Rachman
publisher
The Dial Press
format
Hardcover
pages
288
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There's nothing original about our highlighting THE IMPERFECTIONISTS as the featured book for May; the Sunday NYTimes Book Review featured it on the cover on May 2nd, and Christopher Buckley's amazingly positive review is right on, so all that I can do is parrot what Buckley said about Tom Rachman's extraordinary debut novel.
Set in Rome, Paris, and Cairo, THE IMPERFECTIONISTS follows the inner workings of an English language newspaper based in Italy. Brainchild and plaything of impulsive millionaire Cyrus Ott, the paper has been around since the fifties - scrappy, eclectic, and always trusted to tell the truth. Now, as sound bites replace scoops and web sites sound the death knell for newsprint, the paper's reporters, editors, and executives scramble to make sense of the new century.
Kathleen Solson, the ruthless editor-in-chief, is feared but secretly suffering after an emotional shift in her open marriage; Arthur Gopal, the indolent obit writer, is stunned by a death in his own family. Veteran copy editor Ruby Zaga, considered a "menopausal troll" by her young colleagues, suddenly feels vulnerable and infatuated after one kiss. The paper's old guard is represented by Lloyd Burko, a vagabond four-time-married newshound who is now reduced to exploiting his son's contacts to sell a freelance story. The new generation is personified by Winston Cheung, a bookish and innocent young hire thrust into the dizzying world of money-grubbing, woman-grabbing foreign correspondents.
All of them are shadowed by the story of the paper's founding Ott family, from the dedicated and mercurial Cyrus to his clueless grandson, Oliver, more interested in his magnificent basset hound Schopenhauer than in the family business. As financiual losses mount and layoffs loom, both stringers and staff defiantly strive to get their acts together and to be true to their readership - if not to their loved ones-knowing that, for the record, "credibility is pretty much all we have left."
This is a witty, stirring, and highly original novel, and I predict that Rachman will be known as one of our sharpest new literary talents.
Tom Rachman was born in 1974 in London, but grew up in Vancouver. He studied cinema at the University of Toronto and completed a Master's degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York. From 1998, he worked as an editor at the foreign desk of The Associated Press in New York, then did a stint as a reporter in India and Sri Lanka, before returning to New York. In 2002, he was sent to Rome as an AP correspondent, with assignments taking him to Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Egypt. Beginning in 2006, he worked part-time as an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris to support himself while writing fiction. He now lives in Rome, where he is working on his second novel.
Beyond the book
Tom Rachman on The Imperfectionists
I grew up in peaceful Vancouver with two psychologists for parents, a sister with whom I squabbled in the obligatory ways, and an adorably dim-witted spaniel whose leg waggled when I tickled his belly. Not the stuff of literature, it seemed to me.
During university, I had developed a passion for reading: essays by George Orwell, short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, novels by Tolstoy. By graduation, books had shoved aside all other contenders. A writer--perhaps I could become one of those.
There was a slight problem: my life to date.
By 22, I hadn't engaged in a bullfight. I'd not kept a mistress or been kept by one. I'd never been stabbed in a street brawl. I'd not been mistreated by my parents, or addicted to anything sordid. I'd never fought a duel to the death with anyone.
It was time to remedy this. Or parts of it, anyway. I would see the world, read, write, and pay my bills in the process. My plan was to join the press corps, to become a foreign correspondent, to emerge on the other side with handsome scars, mussed hair, and a novel.
Years passed. I worked as an editor at the Associated Press in New York, venturing briefly to South Asia to report on war (from a very safe distance; I was never brave). Next, I was dispatched to Rome, where I wrote about the Italian government, the Mafia, the Vatican, and other reliable sources of scandal.
Suddenly--too soon for my liking--I was turning thirty. My research, I realized, had become alarmingly similar to a career. To imagine a future in journalism, a trade that I had never loved, terrified me.
So, with a fluttery stomach, I handed in my resignation, exchanging a promising job for an improbable hope. I took my life savings and moved to Paris, where I knew not a soul and whose language I spoke only haltingly. Solitude was what I sought: a cozy apartment, a cup of tea, my laptop. I switched it on. One year later, I had a novel.
And it was terrible.
My plan - all those years in journalism--had been a blunder, it seemed. The writing I had aspired to do was beyond me. I lacked talent. And I was broke.
Dejected, I nursed myself with a little white wine, goat cheese and baguette, then took the subway to the International Herald Tribune on the outskirts of Paris to apply for a job. Weeks later, I was seated at the copy desk, composing headlines and photo captions, aching over my failure. I had bungled my twenties. I was abroad, lonely, stuck.
But after many dark months, I found myself imagining again. I strolled through Parisian streets, and characters strolled through my mind, sat themselves down, folded their arms before me, declaring, "So, do you have a story for me?"
I switched on my computer and tried once more.
This time, it was different. My previous attempt hadn't produced a book, but it had honed my technique. And I stopped fretting about whether I possessed the skill to become a writer, and focused instead on the hard work of writing. Before, I had winced at every flawed passage. Now, I toiled with my head down, rarely peeking at the words flowing across the screen.
I revised, I refined, I tweaked, I polished. Not until exhaustion--not until the novel that I had aspired to write was very nearly the one I had produced--did I allow myself to assess it.
To my amazement, a book emerged. I remain nearly incredulous that my plan, hatched over a decade ago, came together. At times, I walk to the bookshelf at my home in Italy, take down a copy of The Imperfectionists, double-check the name on the spine: Tom Rachman. Yes, I think that's me.
In the end, my travels included neither bullfights nor duels. And the book doesn't, either. Instead, it contains views over Paris, cocktails in Rome, street markets in Cairo; the ruckus of an old-style newsroom and the shuddering rise of technology; a foreign correspondent faking a news story, a media executive falling for the man she just fired. And did I mention a rather adorable if slobbery dog?
______________
From the NY Times Book Review
The Paper
By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY
Published: April 29, 2010
This first novel by Tom Rachman, a London-born journalist who has lived and worked all over the world, is so good I had to read it twice simply to figure out how he pulled it off. I still haven't answered that question, nor do I know how someone so young - Rachman turns out to be 35, though he looks even younger in his author photo - could have acquired such a precocious grasp of human foibles. The novel is alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching, and it's assembled like a Rubik's Cube. I almost feel sorry for Rachman, because a debut of this order sets the bar so high.
THE IMPERFECTIONISTS
By Tom Rachman
272 pp. The Dial Press. $25
Related
Excerpt: ‘The Imperfectionists' (May 2, 2010)
Up Front: Christopher Buckley (May 2, 2010)
Tom Rachman's Web Site
Books of The Times: ‘The Imperfectionists' by Tom Rachman (May 6, 2010)
Alessandra Rizzo
Tom Rachman
"The Imperfectionists" takes place in Rome. The characters are, for the most part, the staff of an unnamed English- language newspaper founded in the 1950s - for reasons not revealed until the end - by an eccentric American businessman with the perfect name of Cyrus Ott. By 2004, his grandson, Oliver, will be in charge of the fates of the staff members whose stories make up the novel. More's the pity, since Oliver's only concern in life is for his basset hound, Schopenhauer.
Each of the novel's chapters is about a particular staffer (or, in one case, a reader), from the editor in chief on down to a lowly copy editor. The stories interlock, or interlace or inter-something. By the end, we've come to know the newsroom through a sort of Cubist lens, with everyone viewed from various angles. Each chapter could stand alone as a short story. And the end of each chapter comes, in the manner of O. Henry or Saki or Roald Dahl, with a firecracker bang of discovery. There are also short italicized narratives in between the larger ones, mostly dedicated to the Ott family. I don't mean to make the book sound overcomplicated or in any way challenging to read. It isn't, but it's so intricately constructed you may find yourself skipping back and forth to connect the dots and assemble the pieces of the puzzle.
Among the cast is Lloyd Burko, a past-his-prime reporter, married four times, alienated from all his children except one, whom he's about to betray as a source, only to find. . . . Well, I won't give that away, but it's quite something. Then there's Arthur Gopal, a sad-sack obituary writer devoted to his young daughter, Pickle. He's sent off to Switzerland to interview a dying feminist intellectual. During a break, he switches on his cellphone to find 26 missed calls. His life is about to change.
Herman Cohen is the paper's corrections editor, the grammarian and style cop indispensable to any newspaper. He writes thunderous, generally ignored memos about impermissible acronyms, solecisms and misspellings like "Sadism Hussein." You feel his pain when Tony Blair is included on the newspaper's list of "recently deceased Japanese dignitaries." "He glances at the sorry trio of copy editors before him: Dave Belling, a simpleton far too cheerful to compose a decent headline; Ed Rance, who wears a white ponytail - what more need one say?; and Ruby Zaga, who is sure that the entire staff is plotting against her, and is correct. What is the value in remonstrating with such a feckless triumvirate?"
Kathleen Solson, the editor in chief, has just discovered that her ne'er-do-well husband is cheating on her. (There are lots of ne'er-do-wells in Rachman's novel, making one wonder: Is this so very common among newspaper folk?) Kathleen is looking to rekindle an old romance with an Italian, now married and a government press flack: "Here he is, temples graying, eyes bagged, slightly handsome but slightly jowly, wearing the sleepy surrender of the family man."
The funniest section, which comes off as a cross between Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop" and a Hunter S. Thompson "Fear and Loathing" adventure, concerns the paper's helpless young Cairo stringer, Winston Cheung, whose life is hilariously usurped by a fast-talking, on-the-make war correspondent.
Ruby Zaga, the copy editor, is a paranoid Miss Lonely hearts who always checks into a hotel on New Year's Eve so she can pretend to be a stranded American business traveler rather than a dateless 40-something with no prospects. She hates her job and is terrified she's about to be fired. She drunk-dials the Italian flack with whom her boss is trying to reconnect. Bad move, Ruby! But Rachman has a way of getting the reader to root for his losers.
Craig Menzies, the news editor, is informed one day that an e-mail photo of his much younger girlfriend, Annika, naked with another man, has been sent to everyone on the staff. He confronts Annika, who says she feels terrible about it all, but now she (and thus he) faces the prospect of being sued by the man in the picture - for breach of contract because she had promised to buy an apartment with him. Does Italian law actually permit spurned lovers to sue? How do you say in Italian, "Is this a great country, or what?"
One of the strangest but most arresting characters, Ornella de Monterecchi, is the Italian press officer's mother. A kind of Miss Havisham with obsessive- compulsive disorder, she lives alone amid a mountain of clutter consisting of every issue of the paper from the late 1970s to the present day. These she insists on reading in sequence. The current date might be Feb. 18, 2007, but in her world, it's April 23, 1994. When she runs into one of the staffers, she complains about his obituary of Richard Nixon, leaving him to scratch his head. Ornella, however, is no mere caricature. There is, as with Miss Havisham, a terrible personal tragedy to explain her bizarre existence.
The most Roald Dahl-esque episode is granted to Abbey Pinnola, the paper's chief financial officer. Abbey, whose job includes sacking the paper's employees, finds herself on a plane en route to Atlanta, headquarters of the now troubled Ott Group, seated next to a man she's just canned. I won't say more, other than that the end of her story provides that sudden intake of breath reminiscent of Dahl at his sang-froid-est.
The final pages of "The Imperfectionists" unfold as the newspaper and its staff slouch toward - well, not quite toward Bethlehem. Although Cyrus Ott's son and successor as publisher, Boyd, is a cold fish, Rachman manages to gin up some sympathy for him. But it's left to Boyd's son - Oliver, the basset owner - who never bothers reading the paper over which he nominally presides, to provide the novel's ultimate punch. One day Oliver comes across an old letter of his grandfather's, disclosing the real reason he started such an improbable newspaper in the first place. Does Oliver care? Not in the least. He's preoccupied with ordering fancy veal dinners for Schopenhauer and reading aloud to him from "The Hound of the Baskervilles." The scene in which he comes to the offices to announce. . . . Well, I'll let you read it yourself. Perhaps even, as I did, twice.