Casting Call Friday - The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

The Imperfectionists (our September book club selection) is easily my favorite book since we started this blog. Yes, truly! I have great admiration for newspapermen and journalist and this book is a collection of the stories of eleven members of a Rome-based newspaper. Each character’s story captured some aspect about the paper media business, while also providing a brief glimpse of some universal human experience: the naivete when starting a new job, pondering over the meaning of life, the frustration of being unable to find the one and having to settle for just anyone, the self-hatred experienced by one labeled as an outcast, etc. I loved reading about each of the characters Rachman conjured up. They were all flawed individuals (ergo the book’s title) and yet so relatable precisely because of these flaws.

Alas, this is a casting call post and I must get back to that. Because the story is really a composition of 11 mini-stories, I think it would be very appropriate to film this similarly to a movie like Paris, Je T’aime .

Here is a selection of my favorite chapters, and the actor I’ve chosen to play the main role in the would-be shorts.

“Bush Slumps to New Low in Polls”

Paris Correspondent Lloyd Burko finds himself aged, no longer attractive to his wife and out of money. Trying to pitch commissionable story ideas to the paper, he gets in touch with his estranged son.

Cast - Michael Caine

“World’s Oldest Liar Dies at Age 126”

Obituary Writer Arthur Gopal finds himself content working on the least desirable sections of the paper. Then, a tragic event and a meeting with a dying writer challenge him to reinvent himself.

Cast - Kal Penn

“Global Warming Good for Ice Creams”

Corrections Editor Herman Cohen has always worshiped and idolized his childhood best friend. Herman's views must drastically be altered when he is reunited with this friend after many years.

Cast - John Goodman

“U.S. General optimistic on War”

Editor-in-Chief Kathleen Solson has a successful career and an unfaithful husband. Kathleen considers her own prospects of cheating when she runs into an old boyfriend.

Cast - Dami Moore

“The Sex Lives of Islamic Extremists”

Cairo Stringer Winston Cheung is fresh out of college looking to score a journalist position abroad. But he must compete with a couple of sneaky veterans if he wants a commission.

Cast - John Cho

“Kooks with Nukes”

Copy editor Rube Zaga is an outcast at the office. She hates everyone and it seems they all hate her right back. Wallowing in her own mystery, she mulls over the pros and cons of quitting.

Cast - Parker Posey

“76 Die in Baghdad Bombing”

News editor Craig Menzies works really hard at a job he despises. The only things that keep him going are his pipe dream of being an inventor and his beautiful, younger girlfriend.

Cast - Bryan Cranston

Book Club Discussion -- The Imperfectionists

Ah, that time has come...


I hope you all enjoyed Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists as much as I did! I sympathized with every single one of these characters. It's a great book focusing on a (sometimes) slightly dismal, but definitely captivating, sense of everyday life.

I hope you'll join us in this discussion. Most questions are from LitLovers , while a few are from our own lovely Daniela. So, curl up with some tea and your favorite blanket (yay Fall!) & let's get started!

1. The book is a series of vignettes about 11 people in the newsroom of an unnamed paper. Yet The Imperfectionists is more than collection of short stories. How are the chapters connected? How does the book manage to cohere as a novel? Or does it? Perhaps you found it difficult to jump from one character to another—did you?


2. We find out at the end of the book why Cyrus Ott began the newspaper in 1953. Did you have suspicions all along...or were you caught by surprise?


3. Talk about how the headline for each chapter ties in with the fate of the character involved—particularly, say, the seemingly unrelated headline for Lloyd Burko: "Bush Slumps to New Low in the Polls."


4. Who was your favorite character and why?


5. When you catch glimpses of one of the characters in a chapter other than his/her own, does the character show the same traits...or do you see a different facet of the personality? What is the effect of having characters reappear?


6. There is a great deal of wry humor in this book. Which parts did you find especially funny?


7. Did you spend time piecing together the full story of the Ott family as told in the italic sections of the novel?


8. What do you make of the title of the book?


9. The fictional newspaper in this work serves as a metaphor for the press in general. Talk about the fate of newspapers— their future survival. What do you think will happen to them and why? What will be the impact of their possible demise? How important is a well-trained, professional press corp to democracy? Is the egalitarianism of news reporting on the Internet a good thing...or not?


10. What do you think was the overall message of all the combined storylines?

Book Club Selection — September

Well, as much as we loved The Passage, we decided to pick a book that wasn't quite as long for September. This month we'll be reading Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists.  Here's a summary courtesy of Goodreads:

An English-language newspaper headquartered in Rome brings together a strongly imagined cast of characters in journalist Rachman's first novel. Lloyd Burko used to be a stringer living in Paris. He's still in Paris, but now he's just an impoverished former journalist who pretends to have a computer and whose latest wife has moved in with the guy across the hall. Arthur Gopal is languishing as an obituary writer until a death in his own life enables his advancement by erasing his humanity. Hardy Benjamin is a business writer, savvy and knowledgeable about corporate finance but utterly hapless in romance. What they have in common is the never-named paper, whose history is doled out in brief chapters beginning in 1953. The novel's rich representation of expatriate existence surely benefits from the author's experiences as an AP correspondent in Rome and an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris; his thoroughly unglamorous depictions of newsroom cubicles and editorial offices will resonate with anyone who's had a corporate job. But, while the newspaper is its unifying factor, the narrative's heart beats with the people who work there. Rachman's ability to create a diverse group of fully formed individuals is remarkable. Characters range from a kid just out of college who learns the hard way that he doesn't want to be a reporter, to an Italian diplomat's widow. Some are instantly sympathetic, others hard to like. Each is vivid and compelling in his or her own way. The individual stories work well independently, even better as the author skillfully weaves them together. Cameo appearances become significant when informed by everything the reader already knows about a character whoflits in and out of another's story. The novel isn't perfect. The interpolated chapters about the paper's past aren't very interesting; the final entry ends with a ghastly shock; and the postscript is too cute. Nevertheless, it's a very strong debut. Funny, humane and artful. 

I've heard a lot of good buzz about this book so I hope you'll join us at the end of the month to discuss The Imperfectionists!

EDIT: Help us choose what book we'll be reading for October! We've added a poll on the main page of the site.