Yesterday's Trees, Today's News, Tomorrow's Mulch

The Imperfectionists
by Tom Rachman
2010, Dial Press




I try as routinely as possible to read the Sunday New York Times Book Review to stay abreast of contemporary fiction. Usually this takes place at my friend's camp in Maine, where we spend most of our Sundays throughout the summer working collaboratively on the Sunday crossword. As we sit on the lake dock, we work through our nemesis Will Shortz's thicket of punnery and find our ourselves alternately screaming obscenities in frustration or shouting in joy: "Take that, you piece of ****!" "Mongolia! I ****ing knew it!", etc. In between short bursts of word puzzle concentration and bracing dips in the lake, I usually delve into the Book Review, which on such occasions I read cover-to-cover.


While I would say I only remember to make note of one or two books from any given Book Review, and eventually read only a smaller fraction of these, it is not uncommon to see me a few weekends later with a book in my lap I recently encountered in the pages of the Review. Such a book is usually one accumulating a great deal of buzz or from a particularly ecstatic review (especially if the reviewer is a novelist I admire who contributes to the book review: i.e. Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, Jonathans Lethem & Franzen, etc.).


This was certainly the case with Tom Rachman's debut novel The Imperfectionists, which I read about in an absurdly glowing review in the pages of the Book Review (by author Christopher Buckley, whose Boomsday sits unread on my bookshelf). A few short weeks later, The Imperfectionists and I spent some time lakeside together.


While the usual pace of my reading is a rather strong clip, Rachman's novel took me three weeks to finish despite its short (under 300 pages) length; it actually stayed with me to separate trips to two different lakehouses (I lead a privileged life throughout summer thanks to my friends). The reason for this is not that the prose is terribly difficult or the plot too intricate to be able to digest easily, but rather that the emotional depth of the novel necessitated a certain languid pace.


The novel's structural conceit is that each of its approximately dozen chapters is a stand-alone short story about one of the employees of a Rome-based international daily newspaper which can be read and appreciated separately as a complete emotional arc or can be read as part of the narrative whole and grow in meaning and substance as Rachman creates opportunities for telling cameos and inter-textual self-reference. In other words, each story stands powerful and gripping on its own, but when combined, create an overwhelming strength greater than the sum of its parts: think Winesburg, Ohio, say, or the Megazord.


Each chapter begins with a headline, a character and his job for the paper and runs the gamut from foreign correspondents and obituary writers to copy editors and managing editors, e.g "'Global Warming Good for Ice Creams' Corrections Editor - Herman Cohen". The subsequent chapter is ostensibly about that staff member, though as the stories accumulate, they begin to appear in one another's stories.


The effect this has on the narrative is interesting in that it endears the novelist and not his characters to us. (In one sense, it is endearing because of its surface cleverness, but that's not worth discussing.) Take, for example, copy editor Ruby Zaga, whose story "Kooks with Nukes" is an affecting portrait of a woman lost in her somewhat solipsistic attitude towards her workplace. Zaga is a perpetual loner, coming to work early to ensure that no one has stolen the chair she placed a special work order to acquire. She perseveres through the workday by mumbling under her breath about her incompetent colleagues.


Zaga's self image is one riddled with superiority and disgust at her favored colleagues and this misplacement of ego is somehow endearing in the same way a slightly ugly dog is, or the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. In other chapters, Zaga is the object of derision fromher colleagues when referenced and is generally seen as a bumbling harpy.


Strangely, though, the affect for the reader here is not increased sympathy for Zaga herself, who comes off increasingly as self-deluded, but rather for the author, whose empathy for his characters becomes evident as though through sleight-of-hand. Rachman ultimately comes off as far more empathetic and caring than any of his characters, who cannot take the time to know one another, despite his cruelty towards them.


And cruel he is. Perhaps the most disturbing and upsetting of the chapters concerns the Chief Financial Officer of the paper, who is set up rather carefully to be a tragically misunderstood figure whose impatience with her colleagues is a defense mechanism in place to protect her from the sorts of emotional collateral that may ensue when she implements a cost-cutting tactic for the paper. Despite the large quantities of sympathy Rachman wrenches out of the reader, he ultimately debases and shames her in what is perhaps the most horrifyingly striking chapter.


While the aforementioned chapter is hardly the only to exhibit sadistic tendencies on the author's part, his proclivity to put on display the loneliness and desperation, there are also several stories of rather touching redemption, as opposed to prolonged suffering and neurotic disconnect. One such story is that of Ornella de Monterecchi, a subscriber to the paper who reads each issue cover to cover, which necessarily takes longer than an actual day, causing her to lag behind be twenty-five years. She stores each issue fastidiously in her library and reads a different issue every day. Ornella forbids from guests and family references to modern politics or history so as not to ruin the events that will transpire, as the plot of a never ending novel, in her daily reading.


This system of reading acts as a suppressor on Ornella until she gloriously frees herself from her inability to let go of the past, making her chapter the most moving in the collection by far.


Each of the stories that comprises this novel is different, leading to an array of perspectives on the success or failure or the human spirit a la Altman's Short Cuts or Forester's Howards End. The novel's scope is therefore terribly honest and realistic in its inability to commit to any given view of the human experience; Rachman is content to be neither bogged down by his characters' inability to better their lives (Irish Girl) nor to be buoyed up by the triumphant rise of the human spirit over adversity (The Blind Side). What's left is an appropriate mix of the two where some people botch their lives, some scrape by, some transcend their experiences - a delicate and finely-wrought mix of tone.


The prose itself is also given to shape-shifting in the same way the novel's tone is. Some chapters are given to long passages of description, some to lengthy bouts of internal monologue, some almost entirely to dialogue. These shifts seem to depend in large part on each character's level of interaction with the world around him. This variety in writing style is by no means schizophrenic in nature; all are united by a larger authorial style and jive with one another in the grand scheme, but do lend the novel a bit of variety in the actual reading.


Ultimately, the strongest impression The Imperfectionists makes on me, other than the virtuosic talent of its author, is its slightly hermetic tone. After nearly a dozen characters and short stories revolving around this newspaper, one is left with the impression that despite the incredibly close working quarters most share with one another, none of these characters truly know each other. Our only glimpses into their inner lives are through the forty pages we spend with each character and as we move on and these characters are again referenced in subsequent chapters or in the afterword at the end of the book, I feel only a lingering sadness that my experience with each character was so short and that I can never feel as close to them again - rather like the emotional experience of staying in touch with a formerly close friend.


Rachman's characters exist together in a maelstrom of activity but despite their mandatory collisions seem not to know or care much for each other, unable to see the trees for the forest even though they're planted right next to each other, lending the novel a decidedly somber tone throughout. It's as though each character is holed up in Ornella di Monterecchi's library, sealed off from the contemporary world and to be cherished one at a time, once and then discarded forever, leaving only the traces of a context that help to inform tomorrow's news.