The Imperfectionist
The Imperfectionists and its relation to news News and fiction are opposites of each other. News is an approximate truth based on journalistic work where research and reliable sources has been used to provide a description of an event. Fiction on the other hand is not bound to tell the truth. Nevertheless, both news and fiction is a version of reality because whereas news retells what has happened, fiction can discuss these events in a fictitious way and at the same time be realistic. This is why news and fiction are in one way related but in another way the two forms of writing are on opposite side of the literary rope. It is truth versus creativity (Lorenzo, 2014). However, one can be creative when writing about the truth and that ties news
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and fiction together. News is a significant part of literature because both contemporary and historical news are great inspiration for writers to write realistic and unrealistic fiction and other literature.
One realistic novel, about news, is The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.
The novel is a collection of short stories about the people working at a newspaper in Rome. Through these stories, the reader learns about the characters’ work at the newspaper and their personal struggles. In this essay I will explore how Rachman interweaves fiction with historical development and changes in the news industry in a realistic manner.
The author of The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman, is an educated journalist who has worked as a foreign-desk editor, correspondent in Rome and as an editor at The International Herald Tribune in Paris. He has written from India, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Belgium, Britain and elsewhere. The Imperfectionists was published in 2010. Being a journalist writing a novel about journalists working in Rome, just like he did a few years before he wrote this novel, must have given him most of the inspiration he needed to write …show more content…
it.
Obviously, The Imperfectionists has close relations to news because of the plot. It is about an international newspaper and the people working there. Each chapter in the novel has its own main character, characters who work in different departments at the paper. In the novel, the paper is never named but always referred to as the paper or the newspaper. It was established in 1954 and aimed to be an international newspaper. It started with a group of mainly men, Americans mostly but a few Britons, Canadians and Australians too. All these people were based in Italy when hired, and they all spoke Italian but the newsroom was strictly Anglophone. By 1957 the paper had increased to twelve pages a day, adding a culture section and obituaries. Circulation reached fifteen thousand with mostly European readers. As the years went by the newspaper changed – more female journalists, and a technological development which provided change in equipment. Typewriters were replaced by video display terminals. However, the biggest change was money. The paper become more profitable during the seventies and daily circulation increased to twenty-five thousand. The paper was, as all newspapers of course, depending on money particularly to have enough money to keep correspondents on all continents and in the most important countries and cities.
The novel gives the reader an insight of how the journalists work. Especially interesting is the hierarchical structure at the paper. Everyone is bound to know their place. There is the one superior on the top who makes the final decisions and then there are the other editors and then journalists. This aspect is particularly clear in the chapter about Winston Cheung who is a correspondent in Cairo. Another journalist called Snyder comes to Cairo to challenge him on being the Cairo correspondent. Snyder takes full advantage of the unexperienced Winston and makes his life miserable. An older, more experienced journalist makes Winston feel completely useless, steals his laptop and takes away any chance Winston ever had to become the Cairo correspondent.
Each chapter’s title is a news headline, headlines that could have been in a real newspaper. The headlines relate to the character of the particular chapter, to which case or story the character is working on in the chapter. Events the employees at the paper work on throughout the story is mostly true events that has actually taken place. By doing so Rachman keeps the storyline very realistic. He also emphasises that the news stories are realistic by writing a whole chapter about the reader Ornella De Monterecchi who reads so slowly that she is thirteen years behind. When asked about what year of the paper she is reading at the moment she answers by saying what was happening in the world at that time. She catches up on the genocide in Rwanda, which was in 1994, in 2007. While the planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York in 2001, Ornella was reading about the fall of the Soviet Union. Chapters like this, but generally the whole novel, make the difference between news and fiction smaller because the fiction is heavily based on reality.
One of the most interesting themes in the novel is how the paper adjusts to new technology and a developing society. The paper never got a website. It is obvious that the superiors at the paper have very traditional views and values. They do not see the need for change. They have been doing fine since the fifties and will continue to do so without changing. The corrections editor in the novel, Herman Cohen said “the Internet is to news what car horns are to music” (p.381). Cohen does not see the point of getting a website for the paper. These discussions about going online is set in 1994, a year in which the Internet is on its way into people’s lives. The Internet changed the news industry and culture forever. Many newspapers set up websites and charged for access. This did not work that well since people just used websites that gave the same news free of charge. More and more media companies went online where people would get access for free, and expected that Internet advertisements would catch up with print losses (p. 381). People want easy access to news and the Internet is a much faster way to gain access to the latest events than a newspaper. As a result of how people want news as fast as possible, the quality of news can suffer. With newspapers journalists has a deadline to deal with in order to get the newspaper finished to an exact point of time. The Internet and the people using it to gain access to news do not have a deadline for the journalists. People want to be able to read or see the news minutes, even seconds after it has happened (How The Internet Has Changed News Media Outlets). It is a difficult balance between trying to make money and at the same time keep readers who are willing to pay for content they most likely could easily gain access to for free.
All of the above sums up to be a representation of the culture of news and the change of it.
The reader gets information about how the paper is run, who runs it, what challenges the paper has to face when it comes to new technology, Internet and how society changes with these developments. The paper relies on people to read it but also people to run it and fill it with news. The editor-in-chief in the novel Kathleen Solson, claimed in 2004 there to be too critical of a time in history to write news stories about celebrities on the beach with fat folds – “we can leave that to the Internet”. There was the war on terror, the rise of Asia and climate change to mention some, that were the important news stories to report. The aims of the paper seemed to be that this newspaper would cover stories with quality and that would make the paper survive the modernising development, especially the Internet threat. “Whatever you want to call it – news, text, content – someone has to report it, someone has to write it, someone has to edit it. And I intend for us to do it better no matter the medium. We are the quality source among international newspapers” (p. 179). This is a part of Kathleen’s answer to a question to if the news industry is going to survive. The paper would want to be so good that getting a website is not necessary, but it proves not to
be.
All of these technological changes and the fact that the newspaper never got a website affected the paper’s economy and thereby the employees. When the paper was started up in 1954 most of the hired people already lived in Italy. As the years went by more and more journalists moved to Italy to work at the paper. They created a life in Rome, got married, started a family and so on. Without being able to work at this international Anglophone newspaper, getting another job in Italy without speaking Italian would be difficult. When the shut down of the paper is a fact, the employees are furious. The novel shows how fatal it can be for a news publication to not follow the stream when their circulation is not very high.
Tom Rachman manages to interweave fiction with historical development and change in the news industry in a highly realistic manner. The one primary reason for that is the use of recognizable events throughout the plot and the use of these events as a backdrop in the chapters where characters are presented through their work and their personal lives. The chapter headlines are also important, and there is no doubt that being historically correct has been an important part of the novel for Rachman, hence to the chapter about the dedicated reader Ornella De Monterecchi. Rachman ties together two very important and different forms of writing into a novel. On the whole, news and fiction are important and necessary even though they are opposites. Journalism gives us the truth but fiction reflects and uses this truth in a creative way to see it from another perspective (Lorenzo, 2014). The Imperfectionists gives the reader a view from backstage, a view on how the journalists and editors work, their personal lives and how their personal lives are affected by their work at the paper. The novel is one example on how news and the novel are indeed related.
and fiction together. News is a significant part of literature because both contemporary and historical news are great inspiration for writers to write realistic and unrealistic fiction and other literature.
One realistic novel, about news, is The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.
The novel is a collection of short stories about the people working at a newspaper in Rome. Through these stories, the reader learns about the characters’ work at the newspaper and their personal struggles. In this essay I will explore how Rachman interweaves fiction with historical development and changes in the news industry in a realistic manner.
The author of The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman, is an educated journalist who has worked as a foreign-desk editor, correspondent in Rome and as an editor at The International Herald Tribune in Paris. He has written from India, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Belgium, Britain and elsewhere. The Imperfectionists was published in 2010. Being a journalist writing a novel about journalists working in Rome, just like he did a few years before he wrote this novel, must have given him most of the inspiration he needed to write …show more content…
it.
Obviously, The Imperfectionists has close relations to news because of the plot. It is about an international newspaper and the people working there. Each chapter in the novel has its own main character, characters who work in different departments at the paper. In the novel, the paper is never named but always referred to as the paper or the newspaper. It was established in 1954 and aimed to be an international newspaper. It started with a group of mainly men, Americans mostly but a few Britons, Canadians and Australians too. All these people were based in Italy when hired, and they all spoke Italian but the newsroom was strictly Anglophone. By 1957 the paper had increased to twelve pages a day, adding a culture section and obituaries. Circulation reached fifteen thousand with mostly European readers. As the years went by the newspaper changed – more female journalists, and a technological development which provided change in equipment. Typewriters were replaced by video display terminals. However, the biggest change was money. The paper become more profitable during the seventies and daily circulation increased to twenty-five thousand. The paper was, as all newspapers of course, depending on money particularly to have enough money to keep correspondents on all continents and in the most important countries and cities.
The novel gives the reader an insight of how the journalists work. Especially interesting is the hierarchical structure at the paper. Everyone is bound to know their place. There is the one superior on the top who makes the final decisions and then there are the other editors and then journalists. This aspect is particularly clear in the chapter about Winston Cheung who is a correspondent in Cairo. Another journalist called Snyder comes to Cairo to challenge him on being the Cairo correspondent. Snyder takes full advantage of the unexperienced Winston and makes his life miserable. An older, more experienced journalist makes Winston feel completely useless, steals his laptop and takes away any chance Winston ever had to become the Cairo correspondent.
Each chapter’s title is a news headline, headlines that could have been in a real newspaper. The headlines relate to the character of the particular chapter, to which case or story the character is working on in the chapter. Events the employees at the paper work on throughout the story is mostly true events that has actually taken place. By doing so Rachman keeps the storyline very realistic. He also emphasises that the news stories are realistic by writing a whole chapter about the reader Ornella De Monterecchi who reads so slowly that she is thirteen years behind. When asked about what year of the paper she is reading at the moment she answers by saying what was happening in the world at that time. She catches up on the genocide in Rwanda, which was in 1994, in 2007. While the planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York in 2001, Ornella was reading about the fall of the Soviet Union. Chapters like this, but generally the whole novel, make the difference between news and fiction smaller because the fiction is heavily based on reality.
One of the most interesting themes in the novel is how the paper adjusts to new technology and a developing society. The paper never got a website. It is obvious that the superiors at the paper have very traditional views and values. They do not see the need for change. They have been doing fine since the fifties and will continue to do so without changing. The corrections editor in the novel, Herman Cohen said “the Internet is to news what car horns are to music” (p.381). Cohen does not see the point of getting a website for the paper. These discussions about going online is set in 1994, a year in which the Internet is on its way into people’s lives. The Internet changed the news industry and culture forever. Many newspapers set up websites and charged for access. This did not work that well since people just used websites that gave the same news free of charge. More and more media companies went online where people would get access for free, and expected that Internet advertisements would catch up with print losses (p. 381). People want easy access to news and the Internet is a much faster way to gain access to the latest events than a newspaper. As a result of how people want news as fast as possible, the quality of news can suffer. With newspapers journalists has a deadline to deal with in order to get the newspaper finished to an exact point of time. The Internet and the people using it to gain access to news do not have a deadline for the journalists. People want to be able to read or see the news minutes, even seconds after it has happened (How The Internet Has Changed News Media Outlets). It is a difficult balance between trying to make money and at the same time keep readers who are willing to pay for content they most likely could easily gain access to for free.
All of the above sums up to be a representation of the culture of news and the change of it.
The reader gets information about how the paper is run, who runs it, what challenges the paper has to face when it comes to new technology, Internet and how society changes with these developments. The paper relies on people to read it but also people to run it and fill it with news. The editor-in-chief in the novel Kathleen Solson, claimed in 2004 there to be too critical of a time in history to write news stories about celebrities on the beach with fat folds – “we can leave that to the Internet”. There was the war on terror, the rise of Asia and climate change to mention some, that were the important news stories to report. The aims of the paper seemed to be that this newspaper would cover stories with quality and that would make the paper survive the modernising development, especially the Internet threat. “Whatever you want to call it – news, text, content – someone has to report it, someone has to write it, someone has to edit it. And I intend for us to do it better no matter the medium. We are the quality source among international newspapers” (p. 179). This is a part of Kathleen’s answer to a question to if the news industry is going to survive. The paper would want to be so good that getting a website is not necessary, but it proves not to
be.
All of these technological changes and the fact that the newspaper never got a website affected the paper’s economy and thereby the employees. When the paper was started up in 1954 most of the hired people already lived in Italy. As the years went by more and more journalists moved to Italy to work at the paper. They created a life in Rome, got married, started a family and so on. Without being able to work at this international Anglophone newspaper, getting another job in Italy without speaking Italian would be difficult. When the shut down of the paper is a fact, the employees are furious. The novel shows how fatal it can be for a news publication to not follow the stream when their circulation is not very high.
Tom Rachman manages to interweave fiction with historical development and change in the news industry in a highly realistic manner. The one primary reason for that is the use of recognizable events throughout the plot and the use of these events as a backdrop in the chapters where characters are presented through their work and their personal lives. The chapter headlines are also important, and there is no doubt that being historically correct has been an important part of the novel for Rachman, hence to the chapter about the dedicated reader Ornella De Monterecchi. Rachman ties together two very important and different forms of writing into a novel. On the whole, news and fiction are important and necessary even though they are opposites. Journalism gives us the truth but fiction reflects and uses this truth in a creative way to see it from another perspective (Lorenzo, 2014). The Imperfectionists gives the reader a view from backstage, a view on how the journalists and editors work, their personal lives and how their personal lives are affected by their work at the paper. The novel is one example on how news and the novel are indeed related.