| Intertwined Lives and Headlines |
May 27, 2010
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman is a funny and moving book about the life of an international English-language newspaper and about the intertwined lives of the very different people who own it or manage it or work for it or just read it. Set in Rome (not a touristy, warm, and fuzzy Rome but a very real Rome of burglars and dusty offices and art-clad but tomb-like mansions), Rachman devotes his chapters one by one to the individuals associated with the paper, their work lives and personal lives, their angsts and triumphs. Alongside these chapters, in italicized intervals, Rachman details the founding and successive management of the paper (founded to perpetuate a crush, carried along by a variety of egos and motivations, and finished off by the digital age).
As interesting as the life of the newspaper is -- and as sad as its demise is -- the individual stories of humans involved are even better, and in the end, even more sad. And yet I would never characterize this book as a sad book or a bummer book -- it is too funny to be tragic, and too enlivening to be depressing.
Rachman worked as a
journalist and he knows the world he is writing about. He writes with
love, wide-open eyes, and a great sense of humor, as when aspiring stringer
Winston Cheung tries to get the truth from seasoned reporter Russell
Snyder about the Srebenica massacre story, while Russell just wants to
talk about losing out on a job with the New York Times:
"It must
have been
pretty upsetting."
"Not getting the Times job?"
"Covering a
massacre."
"Oh, totally."
Rachman begins each chapter about an individual with a plausible headline from real news of the past fifty years: "Bush Slumps to New Lows in Polls"; "Gunman kills 32 in Campus Rampage"; "Cold War Over, Hot War Begins"; "76 die in Baghdad Bombings"; "Kooks with Nukes" (a story about Iran and North Korea); and "Europeans Are Lazy, Study Says" (is this one plausible? No comment). The titles set the reader firmly on a time line and then the ensuing chapter filled in the space of that moment in time with what the rest of humanity was up to, using one person's life as a reflection of how clueless we all really are about each other, ourselves, and the world as large. We might be voracious readers of newspapers but we remain largely in the dark, nevertheless. Rachman's characters work in journalism but they are more out of touch with their own realities than anyone else! The obituary writer who can't talk about the one death that changed his life; the business reporter who can't see that her boyfriend is using her for all he can take; the CFO who can't recognize a pissed-off employee when she sees one; or the news editor who doesn't see what is in front of his own nose are just a few examples of the journalists who are good at their job but not so stellar in other departments. In other words, these characters are human, trying hard but getting nowhere near the place they want to go. Question: is it the journey that matters, or the arrival? In the end, all that these characters can claim for their own is the journey -- and it is an experience they -- and I -- will never forget.
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