The Imperfectionists –Tom Rachman

They deny responsibility. But Herman has infinitely less time for pardon than for blame. “If none of you nitwits know what GWOT means,” he says, “then why is GWOT in the paper?”

An arctic silence settles upon the copydesk.

“Have you read the Bible?” he demands. “Any of you?” He glances at this 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?

“Sooner or later…” Herman says, and allows the partial threat to hang there. He turns from them, prodding the air. “Credibility!” he declares. “Credibility!”

He elbows into his office, and the momentum of his belly topples a stack of books―he must tread with caution in here, for this is an overstuffed room and he is an overstuffed man. Reference works clutter the room―classics like Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations…and A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic.

p. 77-78

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Tom Rachman

 

I don’t read much contemporary fiction, but my friend Nate lent me his copy which he’d read for his book group. I gave it a go. Here’s what I think.

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People angle and blag and bully and gossip through the working day, but it’s the private lives where the really interesting things happen.

What you have in The Imperfectionists is a series of short stories that are one story, all revolving around the office of an international newspaper based in Rome, and each focused on one of the staff employed there.

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There is Lloyd Burko, the ageing freelancer who can’t use email, who pesters his children for lunch and his contacts for a story.

Arthur Gopal, obituary writer, whose favourite thing is making Nutella sandwiches and cheating at Monopoly with his daughter Pickle, but is sent to interview his boss’ favourite feminist intellectual before she dies.

BusinessReporter Hardy Benjamin and the dreadlocked young Irishman she meets when their homes are both burgled by a couple of punkabbestia druggies.

Herman Cohen, pedantic Jewish Corrections Editor whose legendary school friend Jimmy comes to stay while Herman’s wife is away.

The ‘Bible’ to which he refers above is not the God-breathed book that leads the dead to life, but Herman’s own caustic compendium of spellings and word-usage laws, mainly ignored by his underlings.

Kathleen Solson, hardball editor-in-chief with a cheating husband, who bumps into old flame Dario de Monterecchi, now working for Silvio Berlusconi.

Naïve pushover Winston Cheung, hoping for a stringer position in Cairo, whose life is hijacked by infuriating blag-artist Rich Snyder.

Chief Financial Officer Abbey Pinola, referred to by her colleagues as Accounts Payable, who finds herself sitting next to a man she’s just fired on the place back to Atlanta.

Oliver Ott, directionless grandson of the great founder of the Ott Group, who is sent by his siblings to Rome with his dog Schopenhauer to manage the demise of the paper.

Sudoku

The vignettes, woven around a potted history of this venerable newspaper business from its 1950s inception to the early 21st century, are by turns funny and tragic. All but one or two are satisfiyngly complex.

Minor characters in one chapter are protagonists in another. This Sudoku of plotting makes for a fascinating read but never feels complicated. In fact readability is a hallmark.

The chapters are bookmarked by news stories of the period. In that time, rookies rise through the ranks, careers blossom or fade, relationships sour and sweeten again.

Most don’t make it easy on themselves. An imperfectionist is the opposite of a perfectionist and these characters insist on getting it wrong. For many, nothing less than imperfection will do.

Business as unusual

The trials, revelations and adventures of Rachman’s merry band are set to the Decline and Fall backdrop of ailing/mutating institutions.

What was the rock-solid business of selling news on paper is overtaken by the proliferation of free online content and celebrity tabloidism.

The certainties of the Cold War worlds slide into the moral ambiguities of the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

Relationships which were once straightforward, like that between husband and wife, grow layers of messiness, subterfuge and paradox.

A few of the stories are rendered with Roald Dahl-esque black twists that make you gasp. Yet for all his dark humour and sophistication, Rachman is able to write tenderness realistically;

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He shifts his stool closer and, as her face emerges, he strokes her hair. He touches her forehead. “You,” he says. “You again. You’re still dear to me. You are goodness.” He smiles. “I told you that before.”

She shifts away. “What,” she says hurriedly. “What are you talking about?”

“You―you’re so driven. Like a mole burrowing in the earth, just pushing ahead. But I remember you.” He smiles. “I remember you waking up. You sleeping. You getting the hiccups at the movie theater.”

She can’t talk.

“But it makes me sad,” he concludes. “You make me sad a bit. I still love you, but we’re not going to start anything.”

Her eyes well up. Quietly, she says, “Thank you.” She wipes her nose. “When I’m old and bent and sitting in a chair, you come and hold my hand. All right? That’s your job. Okay?”

He takes her hand and kisses it. “No,” he says. “When you’re old and bent, I’ll be gone. I’ll hold it now. Later, you’ll have to remember.”

p. 125

The man Rachman

Before putting out this his debut novel, Rome-based Canadian Rachman was a foreign correspondent for Associated Press in Rome, and from 2006-08, an editor at International Herald Tribune in Paris. He’s done assignments in Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Egypt.

So he’s been a part of the world his characters work in, although in interview Rachman has said he didn’t use real-life people and situations for his book overly much.

Web chat

In a fascinating web chat on the New Yorker, Rachman talked about how the physical and organisational architecture of the workplace relates to the lives of the workers within it, and how we import or don’t import our private worlds into that public sphere.

I quote it below:

2:14 New Yorker: Tom, in our discussion, we decided the structure of the book—loosely connected individual stories—mirrored the structure of an office (with cubicles) and of a newspaper itself (individual stories in one discreet package) and even of romantic relationships (Menzies and Annika). Did we go too far?

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2:18 Tom Rachman: I like that parallel. I don’t think it’s going too far. One of the things I hoped to do with this book was to explore the hidden lives of those within the same office. Offices, those often-awful locales, are crammed with lives that are barely expressed during daytime hours, whose real pursuits go on in private or after-hours. Each of my stories tells one such story; in this, it’s like an office bared.

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2:24 TR: When I worked in the business, I also noticed how the incredibly personal went on amid the grand themes — that you might be dealing with chaos and war during work hours, but your true worries were often private.

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2:28 TR: Few books are set at workplaces, to the repeated surprise of critics. It is perhaps strange, given how much time we spend in them. And, as you rightly note, they are the source of so much in our lives. Not only the bad stuff you cite, though — they may are be the source of our confidence, aspirations, love affairs. So, yes, they are very rich places to study human experiences, even if most people in them are desperately trying to hide theirs from view.

The type set

Nicely included after the end is a page telling you that the book is set in Bulmer, a font created in the late 18th century by London type-cutter William Martin.

Bulmer marked a transition between old-style and modern. It is characterised by elegantly proportioned letters with long ascenders and descenders.

As such it’s an apt match for these elegant stories of transition, modernisation and people on thresholds.

The Imperfectionists is a likeable novel, an impressive debut that shows Rachman’s ability to mirror the soul of contemporary Euro-American culture, and a thoughtful obituary on the age of the newspaper.

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Herman’s P.S. Did you notice the two typos in the above article? 😉

Baklava in Beaversdam: the Turkishness of Narnia

It struck me once, thinking about C.S. Lewis’ fantasy children’s books, that the Chronicles of Narnia is infused with Turkishness. As a fan of these terribly English stories, I was intrigued to see how far down it went. And what drew Lewis to Turkey? I’m going to set out a few thoughts.

First off, a survey. As you know, Aslan is the Turkish word for lion. The very name of the kings Caspian inflects the region of Central Asia, from which the Turkic peoples migrated. The land of Calormen, rowdy neighbour of Narnia, smells strongly of kebabs and coffee. And of course, there is the Turkish Delight that Edmund catastrophically accepts from the White Witch.

Shasta, Bree and the noble girl Aravis, the trio at the centre of A Horse and His Boy, are Calormene, as is Emeth in The Last Battle. The Calormenes, with their turbans, scimitars, pointy shoes and and Crescent currency owe much not only to Ottoman, but also Arab, Mughal and Persian history. So too do the polytheistic religion centred around Tash (another Turkish word: stone); the lavish decadence of the capital Tashbaan; the Calormene concern for honour and power; their love of poetry and story-telling; and the arranged marriages of the Tarkaans, itself a Turkish term for nobleman.

Father Christmas

It would be superficially fitting to add to this list Santa Claus, since Santa’s derivant St Nicholas originated in Myra in, you guessed it, modern-day Turkey -the area known to history as Asia Minor. But in Narnia it’s not Santa; it’s Father Christmas. They were originally two different gift-giving characters with different origins. St Nick (Sinterklass in Dutch) was only merged with the figure of Father Christmas in Victorian times.

The Britishman Lewis unambiguously preferred Father Christmas, a jolly personification of Christmas who appeared in Ben Jonson in the 1600s and early on was called Sire Christemas or Lord Christmas. Father Christmas typified the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, and was reflected as the Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol, a great genial man in a green fur-lined coat, who takes Ebenezer Scrooge through the bustling streets of London on Christmas morning, sprinkling the essence of Christmas onto the happy populace. How many Christmasses was that?

Lewis’ choice for his Chronicles was apt, as Father Christmas was a personification devised to support the ancient Christian festival against Puritan criticism. Father C. was in effect a protector of jollity and merriness against dour solemnity, a key theme of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He may be English, but his twin Santa is of Turkish extraction. I’m not going to say anything about celebrating Christmas and eating roast turkey, for fear of being lynched.

Where West and East meet

So why Turkey? It is one of the few countries with a strong claim to being truly Eurasian. (The others are Russia, Cyprus, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.) Turkey contributes an Old World universalism, bridging as it does Europe and Asia, a cultural junction point between the influence of Greece, Rome, Russia, Arabia, Syria, Israel, Iran and Iraq. Turkey is bounded by the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Iranian plateau, the Mediterranean, the Aegean Sea and Bulgaria. In this respect, Lewis was trying to embrace as much of the world as possible.

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Istanbul is a historical joinder between East and West in its past as Constantinople, capital of the late Eastern Roman empire and Byzantium, centre of a millennium-long Asian Christian empire, the people whose famed domed architecture was used first for churches and adopted for mosques. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, commissioned in 532 on a site occupied by a church since 15 February 360 and built with stone from Egypt, Lebanon, the Bosporus and Syria, was the tallest cathedral in the world for a thousand years and an ambitious pioneer of pendentive dome technology.

Turkey was the heart of the Ottoman Empire that spanned three continents for 500 years. Anatolia was the site of one of the earliest Neolithic civilisations in the world. The Hittites, Assyrians, Alexander the Great and the Romans, all players in the Bible story at some stage, had a presence in Turkey in ages past. So too did the Mongols in the 1200s. Why was this history appealing to Lewis? It gave Narnia roots in Asia and broadened readers’ horizons from a blinkered “Christianity = western” mindset.

The land was also a medieval battleground for Christendom, with the Seljuq Turks invading in the 11th century and the First Crusade bringing French and Italians to avenge the beleaguered Byzantines. Was this Lewis laying down arms and seeking reconciliation?

Where myth meets history

The land of Turkey is replete with literary, mythological and historical links. This is where Troy was. Homer’s Iliad, the epic tale of Agamemnon and Achilles, Menelaus, Hector, Paris and Helen, is set here. Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus, inspired by the poem, had Ilium built near the ruined site of Troy. (This was the Augustus who issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world, bringing Joseph and a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem.) Homer’s other poem, the Odyssey, tells the tale of Odysseus’ journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan Wars, with the Trojan horse, the cyclops Polyphemus, the Sirens and the whirlpool Charybdis. Lewis was drawing on a love for myth and the epic, realms in which he felt glimpses of divine truth could be found.

Bible lands

Turkey is also a key setting for much of the New Testament and early Church history.  Paul, who wrote a third of the New Testament, was born in Tarsus, nowadays a small town in southern Turkey. The Turkish cities of Ephesus and Colossae –both early Christian centres- were recipients of letters from Paul, as was the region of Galatia. Galatia, where Ankara is, was named after a Celtic people (Galata: Gauls) who were perhaps also the root of the name of Istanbul-based Galatasaray FC, Turkey’s best football club.

Antakya (Antioch), for a long time the second biggest city in both the Roman Empire and the world, was where followers of Jesus were first called Christians. Today the cave church of St Peter can still be seen in Antakya, in use by perhaps 40 or 50AD.

Travels

Luke, the Gentile doctor, probably wrote Acts somewhere in Turkey, and part of Paul’s travels recorded in Acts were through this area. Paul’s protege Timothy was born in Turkey. John took Mary, Jesus’ mum, to Ephesus at some stage. Philemon was a leader in the church at Colossae. When you put it all together, practically all the significant people in the New Testament stepped through Turkey at one time or another.

Lots of early church fathers were locals too. Three chaps with cool names- Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa- were from Cappadocia; Ignatius and John Crystostom were from Antioch; Maximus the Confessor- Byzantium; Polycarp and Irenaeus- Smyrna, now Izmir. The Councils of Ancyra (314AD) and Ephesus (431AD) met to clarify Christian belief and practice. In 325 the Nicene Creed was agreed here, affirming that there is one God and that in Jesus God became a man, died and came alive again. Turkey was at the centre of the map for the development of early Christianity.

All of the seven churches in Revelation –Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea -are in Turkey. Turkey is significant in the Old Testament too. Situated there is Mount Ararat, the 5,137m peak on which Noah’s ship came to rest after the flood in Genesis. These are not minor points of interest, but religion-defining influences. What was Lewis doing here?

Connecting

He was reconnecting with a region that was an early flowerbed of Christianity. He was acknowledging the historical Middle Eastern roots of his faith. This began as an unconsciously natural thing to do. He was reaching back to a people who had once known Jesus as Lord, with all that word entails, but had subsequently demoted him to something lesser. Lewis was on a peaceful march, not a Crusade, to recommend Jesus’ leadership to a country that had tried to put him in a box.

At the time Lewis was dreaming up Narnia, predominately Islamic Turkey was establishing itself as a secularising Republic, entering NATO in 1952. Twenty years before, Lewis had personally fought in the Great War in which the Ottoman Empire was on the other side. Turkey has the dignity of never having been governed by European colonial powers, except for a couple of years after 1918. It had been neutral throughout the Second World War and it would spend the Cold War as an ally of the West. Using Turkish influences meant Lewis could speak into the Middle East whilst side-stepping political controversy.

In letting his literary sub-creation be influenced by Turkish culture, Lewis was drawing into Narnia resonances from the realms of history, geopolitics, religion, Christianity, mythology and literature. He was anchoring Narnia into a soil more ancient, noble and literary than his particular European heritage. He sprinkled Turkishness into the names, food, people and culture of the Chronicles, and in doing so gave us the dishes we enjoy today.