The Captive Reader

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman certainly seems to be the book of the moment.  Catapulted to fame by an uncharacteristically enthusiastic review  in the New York Times, the film rights were recently purchased by Brad Pitt’s production company.  Even my colleagues who only pick up two or three books a year know about it and are planning to read it this summer.  Not bad for a first novel.

It’s not a typical novel though.  In truth, it’s really a series of short stories, centering on characters whose lives revolve around an English-language newspaper in Rome, interrupted by the narrative of the newspaper’s history.  The stories weave together, characters over-lapping from their own tale into a coworker’s and, like most work-place fiction, I found it absolutely fascinating.  I love reading about other people’s jobs, other companies and industries, even the ones I have no interest in working in.  Especially those ones.  Like journalism.

The weakest part of the novel, for me, were the sections dealing with the newspaper’s past.  Following each chapter, there would be a few pages detailing the evolution of the paper, working chronologically through the fifty years from its founding to its demise in 2007.  I suppose it provided a focus, a sort of circle-of-life, ‘why we are all here’ narrative device but it didn’t work for me.  It was bland and inoffensive but it did not add any value to my reading experience and, more often than not, frustrated me when I reached the end of a chapter and realised I’d have to wade through this bit before moving on to the next much-anticipated story.

But the stories themselves?  The modern ones focusing on those who work for and are involved with the paper?  They were wonderful.  Each one had enough layers that I was never truly comfortable while reading, never confident that I knew what was coming, and yet, even by being unpredictable, Rachman’s prose never felt formulaic.  It just felt very real.  The entire reading experience was rather strange and sad, but very real.

As with any book of stories, I had my favourites.  The chapter devoted to Arthur, the obituary writer, broke my heart but did so without descending into that dangerous pit of cloying sentimentality that captures most new writers who attempt to deal with the same topic.  Abbey, also known as “Accounts Receivable”, was the easiest for me to identify with, both because of her unique and much-hated role within the company (no one likes the person who tells them to cut costs) and because of the following sentiment, which distills the very essence of the long-haul traveller, a role I’ve played far too many times:

Once at the boarding gate, Abbey falls into her customary travel coma, a torpor that infuses her brain like pickling fluid during long trips.  In this state, she nibbles any snack in reach, grows mesmerized by strangers’ footwear, turns philosophical, ends up weepy (p. 227)

But, more than any other character, I loved Herman Cohen, the fierce corrections editor.  A respected leader among the newspaper staff, Herman’s story revolves around a visit from a long-time friend, a man Herman has always idolized, always viewed as the next-great-thing in the way you do the cool kids that you look up to as a child, never stopping to reassess them as the years go on.  Herman, who spends his life catching the small details that others miss, remains blind to the truth about his friend.  And when he has that revelation?  For me, it was the most perfect moment of the book.

I think I liked the book more for knowing a few simple facts about Rachman.  He was raised in Vancouver.  Really, that’s all I needed; my hometown loyalties are firmly in place.  After realising that he wanted to be a writer, he moved to Europe to get experience as a journalist and hopefully find inspiration.  This seems like such an outdated, romantic, 20^th Century path, doesn’t it?  It seems like most aspiring writers nowadays go to school to learn how to write rather than actually going out and writing.  But I love that Rachman took this path, that there are still some writers who refuse to let the time-honoured traditions die (though, by all reports, he did not enjoy it – but I’m fairly confident that’s part of the tradition too).  It was clearly his journalistic past that led to such spot-on observances as “‘news’ is often a polite way of saying ‘editor’s whim’” (p. 30) and “…the cocktail bar in the east wall was replaced with a watercooler; the consequent decline in typos was extraordinary” (p. 201).  More than anything, sentiments like that make me desperate to cling to traditional journalism, to the idea of a newsroom rather than an internet chat room, printing presses rather than a computer server.    

(also, because I never get to say this, can I just say how much I prefer the North American cover to the British one?)