Tricks of the trend

There are journalists who try to write novels, and then there are novelists who have worked as journalists. Tom Rachman is the latter and shows it in at least two clear ways.

Rachman, formerly of the Associated Press and the International Herald Tribune, made a splash with the release of his debut novel, The Imperfectionists, earlier this year. An alleged publisher's bidding war preceded its release, and resounding praise resonated in reviews from all the right sources. Brad Pitt's production company has already purchased the movie rights, and a paperback release of the book is forthcoming.

It's exactly the kind of hype that makes a reviewer want to dislike a book, but alas, there is much about the text that is likeable. 

The story - or better said, stories - revolve around the employees of an unnamed English-language newspaper based in Rome (not entirely unlike, nor precisely like, the paper you are reading now). Many critics have called the newspaper the novel's main character, but this shortchanges Rachman's ability to create compelling human characters.

The Imperfectionists
By Tom Rachman
Quercus Publishing 2010
272 pages

In actuality, The Imperfectionists reads like a short-story collection in which each of the 11 chapters is focused on an individual tied to the newspaper. Vignettes between each chapter sketch out the newspaper's approximately 50-year history. More than a character, the paper serves both as a setting and a plot device.

For non-journalists, the novel will be a fun if somewhat light read. But the characters and their melodrama will be especially familiar to anyone who has spent time in a newsroom. There is the washed-up Paris correspondent, the young Cairo stringer who gets taken for a ride by a famed war correspondent, the reader who is so intent on reading every single issue that she now risks trapping herself in the past, and the reclusive publisher with a pet dog named Schopenhauer, among others.

Rich Snyder, the aforementioned war correspondent who shows up in Cairo to take advantage of an inexperienced youngster trying to find his way in the dog-eat-dog world of breaking news, is one of the book's most memorable characters. The hard-to-tame Snyder has just finished an investigative series on "Gypsy AIDS babies," and "never speak[s] foreign languages anymore."

"I used to get so keyed into cultures that it was unhealthy," he says. "So I only talk in English now. Helps me maintain my objectivity."

Rachman certainly possesses a novelist's skill for sketching characters, but largely they remain just that: archetypal sketches of people we all know. This makes them easily accessible but also shallow, as is the case with Snyder, who is humorous but a stereotype.

A certain bile, which seems to emanate from Rachman, is detectable in Snyder's personality. It would seem the real Rich Snyders of the world got under Rachman's skin during his newspapering days, and he is trying his best to mock them. There is nothing wrong with this method, which is, after all, responsible for some great works of satire. That said, it binds Rachman's stories together with something besides the newspaper: an agenda. 

Rachman is on record as saying he did not particularly enjoy his experience in journalism, and this book serves as a testament to those feelings. One senses Rachman's days as a reporter and editor were a means of getting a paycheck as he pursued a more literary future.

The newspaper in the novel has seen better days and limps along in a perpetual state of decline. Rachman uses this storyline to allude to what he clearly feels is a larger trend among newspapers.

In short, Rachman, the unfulfilled journalist, seems to have done his best to ring the death knell for the print newspaper.

But what will then become of the trendy novelists who count on those papers to connect them with Hollywood celebrities and lucrative film deals?   

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com