The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman

General info: Novel/collection of short stories, published in 2010

Storytelling: 9 – I love the title of this collection. You get exactly what you paid for – a collection/novel based on a crew of perfectly imperfect people. I realize that most every author approaches human flaws on some level, but I’ve never seen imperfection of people crafted in such an interesting and witty way, while moving along the story in a convincing and humorous way. However, I supposed I should back up and explain a bit.
I call this a “novel/collection” because it is a bit of both. The story focuses on the life and times of a collection of ex-pats working for an English-language newspaper in Rome. Loosely woven throughout the book are excerpts describing the life of the millionaire family that starts the paper and ultimately kills it, but the bulk of the novel are the brilliantly wrought short stories. These depict a day or two in the lives of the employees of the paper who all happen to be completely imperfect. We meet the Obituary Writer, the Editor-in-Chief, the Corrections Editor and even the Chief Financial Officer. Each of them are wholly and miserably flawed, but each in a unique and achingly wonderful way. Rachman blended wretchedness and wit together in such a genius way that I felt a bit astounded as I closed this book.
Each story takes the reader on a separate little adventure, such as a journey to Switzerland to gather a pre-emptive obituary, to a lonely hotel room on New Years Eve, or through the internal workings of a man who’s found his much younger girlfriend is cheating on him with a guy from her yoga class. Don’t get me wrong; the content of this book was completely depressing if you take it all at face value, but Rachman impressed me greatly with the variety and creativity of his tales and even more with the near-perfect movement of the plot(s). He provided the perfect amount of detail, employed the ideal pace, and crafted sparking but realistic characters. I sailed through this book with ease and felt captivated through the duration.
I have to dock one point, however, for the way the book ended. Call me biased, but there is a needless animal death toward the very end that left a bad taste in my mouth. Also, the paper shuts down at the end of the book leaving all of the characters to scatter to the wind. Rachman tacks on a small chapter at the end detailing where everyone ends up, which I didn’t like so much. I felt that leaving this bit to the imagination of the reader would have added to the unpredictable and darkly playful nature of the book.

Writing: 10 – Holy crap! Where did this guy come from? I love new writers that bust onto the scene with a gusto and get a thumbs up from the New York Times. (For the record, I live and die by the New York Times Book Review. Once in a blue moon, I’ll disagree with them, but for the most part they are pretty trustworthy. Deeming something a New York Times Bestseller, however, means diddly squat. I do not care that the mass American public likes a book – that usually just makes me skeptical of something)
The prose of this book was delightful in its simple elegance. It’s evident that Rachman has lived the life of an American journalist in Europe, but he doesn’t write like a journalist here, which is what most surprised me. His writing is clever, insightful, and detail-oriented without being cumbersome. There are a few brilliant passages that are almost poetic in their beauty, and then the next page will include some frank descriptions that make you snort you’re laughing so hard. I loved the graceful mobility of this book.
Most of all, I loved Rachman’s wit and his grasp of flawed humanity. For example, why doesn’t anyone else write about the fact that people get lazy and eat a can of beans for a meal, or drink themselves to sleep on a weeknight? Similarly, Rachman approaches how utterly ridiculous insecure women get when any male pays them attention, he examines how power structures can be completely opposite at home and in the office, and he taps into how getting what we want is precisely what we don’t want. I could go into more detail but hey, you have to read the book, and I’m just going to start babbling.

Characters: 9 – The diversity of the characters contained in such a short book (a mere 269 pages) is what truly amazed me. I know I’m gushing about this novel, but I truly found it exceptional in many ways. There were many introduced, but having them all sectioned off neatly into their own little chapters made them easy to keep track of. Rachman cleverly references other members of the paper in other short stories, some of them before we meet them and some of them after, and I believe he did this in a fun “a ha!” way. They are all connected but it’s evident that none of them really know anything about each other. (Then again, isn’t this sadly true of any workplace?)
At first glance, all of these characters appear pathetic, but that would be incorrect; they are simply human. Rachman casts them in a harsh light and oddly enough, I felt myself connecting in some way with each and every person. They ran the gamut, from controlling narcissist to self-loathing mega-introvert, but at the end of each story I felt a little bit attached to all of them, even if they drove me completely crazy. I know this book got a lot of criticism for making the characters too abysmal and unlikeable, but I didn’t see it that way. They were simply honest, and I know a lot of readers don’t want that and are instead looking for an entertaining and morally satisfying break from reality. I think anyone who says they didn’t find a single one of these characters relatable is completely lying to themselves or lives on a cloud.
Again I have to dock one point for this book, simply because I would have liked to see a few more rays of sunshine sprinkled in. I think showing some hope or a positive light would not have subtracted from the authenticity here, considering such a large cast of characters cannot all be having such a bad day during their selected stories. I get that showing imperfection was the point of the novel, and if it isn’t already obvious I loved this book, but Rachman sure did nail you with a lot of depressing realism. I believe that humans are as flawed as they are in this book, but I also believe that they are innately good, which you don’t see much of here. Maybe Rachman’s harsh light was a bit too harsh, but only a tiny bit so.

Best part: Hmm. Tricky. I would have to say my favorite part was the short story about Ornella de Monterecchi, a faithful reader of the paper for years and years. She is one of those lonely old souls with money who goes about intentionally making everyone’s life miserable and terrorizing the maid. Most interestingly, she insists on reading each paper cover to cover, which she can’t complete in a day. After a few decades she is still going chronologically and remains stuck in 1994 even though it’s actually 2007. Additionally, she insists that anyone coming into her house not discuss any present day news. The most terrifying part of this is that I’m sure there are real life people out there in this world who are this nuts.

Recommend to: I probably wouldn’t recommend this book to people who are depressed or going through a hard time. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’d recommend this to anyone else.

Reminded me of: Zadie Smith

How I would murder the main character: Considering the main character is basically any depressing soul working at the paper, I'd likely push them into a particularly painful part of the newspaper printer machine thing (whatever that's called) and then pour garbanzo beans on them.

Sexy parts: There are affairs and wayward romances all over this novel. Rachman never goes into anything graphic (darn) but he perfectly depicts how strange romance can be sometimes and how we can be compelled toward the worst people. Now that I mull it over, most of the sexy/love-related/marriage-related parts of this book were completely depressing aside from a few vague accounts of happy marriages. Maybe Rachman recently had his heart broken. ..

To sum it up: A captivating and eccentric collection of stories examining human foible and folly.

Overall: 9.5

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

General info: Novel, published in 1851

Storytelling: 6 - I am going to tread lightly with this review, partially because I really didn’t “get” half of this book and partially because if I really start critiquing it, I fear that an angry mob of male literature geeks will come burn down my apartment. (Let’s just face it – 90% of people who adore this book are dudes)
First and foremost, this is a story that wholly unlike anything that’s ever been written. How many other books out there give you an unadulterated glimpse of the whaling industry at the end of the 19th century? Melville had experienced all of this nonsense firsthand, so he was able to provide all sorts of gritty details that kept me up at night. Also, even though it was written by a lowly sailor (who also happened to come from a rather well-to-do family, but let’s ignore that part), this work is overflowing with symbolism, metaphor, Shakespearean devices, words that no one knows, and anthropomorphism. I was surprised the kitchen sink didn’t fall out of the pages. I don’t think anyone can deny that this was a tour de force intended to knock your socks off, and I can see how that’s been the case for many people.
However, because Melville was so insanely complex, he also made his book a little ridiculous, and he lost me as a reader a few dozen times. The beginning started out interestingly enough as the main character (we call him Ishmael) met Queequeg (his native New Zealand harpooning pal who is seen as a cannibal savage) and prepared to board the Pequod, a whaling ship set to sail for three years. There was actually a plot at the beginning and some foreshadowing about the disaster that awaited them. You find out about the obsessive captain, Ahab, who is intent on revenge against the albino sperm whale that tore off his leg and sank his last ship. And you get to know the three males, Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask who come in and out the tale at various times to act as a foil for Ahab.
Then once they get further out on the ocean, it got weirder. Melville goes off the radar and starts going into a ton of scientific detail about types of whales, the uses of spermaceti, different international whaling ventures, how much butter various types of ship carry, blah blah blah. From there on out he more or less abandons Ishmael and Queequeg as characters and the rest of the book focuses 30% on Ahab and his maniacal obsession with finding Moby Dick and about 70% on whale murder and the weird shit that went along with that. The plot came in and odd times and was all over the place, which annoyed me. Melville also liked to go off on strange tangents and wax poetic for a few dozen pages about random things. I’m sure he had some reason for doing so, but I just wasn’t following. However, I’m guessing this lot would have made a lot more sense if I read this a century earlier.
Finally, about halfway through the book I guessed the ending (not the coffin bit; that was clever and spooky) which I partially attribute to hearing about this story my whole life. This should have inspired me to reach the ending and uncover the excitement, but it didn’t really. I ended this book feeling really sorry for Moby Dick and rolling my eyes.
In summation, my socks were only partially blown off, but I still have to rank this story highly because it’s so enigmatic.

Writing: 8 – First of all I have say, Melville’s syntax is some of the most amazing and confusingly brilliant I’ve ever seen. I spent half of this book thinking to myself “Holy hell. Who writes like this?!?!”. This thought was rhetorical, of course, but the answer is no one. No one else writes like this. And now I understand why everyone and their mom was harping on me to read this book.
In many ways, this was a lot like reading a large book of dense poetry dressed up as prose, given the amazingly deliberate choice of words and the lyrical flow of certain passages. Not only were characters and events used as metaphors, I felt like Melville was even hinting at his larger themes on a much smaller scale and was selecting specific words accordingly. I’m fully able to appreciate the scope and grandeur of this book, but I admit that perhaps I’m not intelligent enough to understand it all.
The only reason Melville is getting any points docked is due to his wordy weird tangents. I believe that many of these asides and references (many of them biblical and mythological) would have made much more sense to someone reading this in 1875, but he incorporates far too many for my liking. Even if I had understand all that Melville was hinting at, he breaks far too long from the action to compel me or fully make the same point he’s likely already made fifteen times. The preamble drags and really lengthens what I think could have been a much shorter but equally as genius book.

Characters: 7 – Melville was a little tricky with his characters throughout this book. I want to say I left knowing very little about them, but that wouldn’t be accurate; I left knowing some about them. Instead of laying it all out there for the reader to absorb, there were details scattered here and there for you to pick out of the wordy craziness.
For example, we find out that Ahab is an orphan who has spent his entire life on whaling ships. Starbuck has a wife and a young son that he would like to return to at home (although in his heart he knows he likely won’t). Queequeg proves to be oddly more civilized than his Christian counterparts, although he’s supposedly a savage. All of these little details help to make Melville’s characters a bit more real and a bit more likeable, even if they all remain shrouded in mystery.
Far and away, I found Moby Dick to be the most interesting character. He appears very briefly in the book, but exists as a primary character who exists as the primary focus of the novel. We can never see what he’s thinking or feeling, which I suppose is the point. And, he’s an animal, and I really like animals.
I think the White Whale truly symbolizes something different to every reader, and this is the true beauty of it. And needless to say, I think we can all relate to Ahab on some level, although perhaps not quite as dramatically. Hell, I think we can all somewhat to relate to all of the characters in this book. I, for one, related to Ahab’s obsession, Stubb’s foolishness, Queequeg’s individualism, and Starbuck’s sense of decency. I liked Melville’s characters just fine, but their development and use wasn’t as mind-blowing as I would have liked it to be.

Best part: Ahab’s death. While attempting to kill Moby Dick, he launches a harpoon into the whale. Moby Dick dives to escape and in doing so, the harpoon rope tangles around Ahab’s neck and drags him down into the sea. Symbolism anyone?

Recommend to: Guys in their 30’s who want to read a classic

Reminded me of: This novel is so completely unique. I really can’t think of anything that comes even close.

How I would murder the main character: I’d probably chop of Ishmael’s toes in the blubbering room and then feed him to the ravenous sharks.

Sexy parts: This is the least sexy book in the existence of all books.

To sum it up: An influential, brilliant, and informative classic that occasionally veers off course.

Overall: 7.5