Careerists always salute those who lack ambition

The Italian Teacher, by Tom Rachman, was unexpectedly engrossing. I knew absolutely nothing about it, hadn't even glanced at a plot summary, I don't know why — perhaps because from the moment I heard about it I already planned to read it. It's not about an Italian teacher at all. At least, not in any conventional sense.

So here's a book that was absolutely the right book at the right time for me. It gave me a great deal to think about, given some of my current circumstances.

There's the tension between art vs craft (in my own life, my chosen profession is the craft of editing, perhaps at the expense of the art of writing). There's what we perceive others' lives to be, and the reality of their lives behind closed doors. How we define art. How we define success. How we fight or fulfil others' expectations of us.

There's how we think our lives are going to turn out, and how far off the mark we end up. It's about what we become when we're not paying attention.

Careerists always salute those who lack ambition.

There's very little Italian about it, apart from the opening scenes. There's nothing "exotic" about it; it's Toronto and London. And the "teacher" aspect is incidental. This is a novel that surprised me repeatedly in where the plot took me and the insights it offered. I looked forward to my commute to see what came next.

It's also a book about art and the art world, and I have a soft spot for those. Determining the value of Art is to me an endlessly mystifying fascinating thing, a volatile algorithm weighing the work itself, its objective quality, sometimes the subject matter, the artist, the artist's personality and celebrity and reputation (and these are different things), whether the artist is living or dead, basic supply and demand, the perceived rarity of the work, the perceived interest in the work, the zeitgeist, et cetera.

There's the problem of what is art:

Potters get so exercised about art versus craft. But the older I get, the more I prefer craft. With craft, you know if a piece is right. It the pot so cumbersome that the farmer's wife couldn't lift it? Is my glaze poisonous? A pot is either correct, or it is not. Whereas art is never quite good or bad. Art is simply a way of saying "opinion."

And what is great art:

"If men were beautiful, Marsden, why is beauty always portrayed as a woman?"

"Because artists are servants of the rich, and the rich are men. They've always wanted their pinup girls."

"Great art is not a matter of sex."

"My dear friend! What else would it be?"

This novel is not about a great artist, as some plot summaries might have you believe. It's about his son Charles (otherwise known as Pinch), growing up in his shadow, waiting be be acknowledged.

The novel spans Pinch's whole life. We undoubtedly see far more clearly than he does the effect of his father on him, how overbearing — thoughtless and cruel — the father and how sad — pathetic — the son.

Nothing sadder than those who declare themselves artists when not a soul cares what they create.

Pinch does finally develop a secret life (I was rooting for him!). His motivations are complex (revenge against his father, vindication of his mother, personal fulfilment, financial security for the 16 other children fathered by the artist, spite against the world, et cetera), and it's debatable whether he achieves success in his project. You decide.

"Why impress anyone, if not the people you don't care for?"

Reviews
Chicago Review of Books: In 'The Italian Teacher,' Art Is Sex

Guardian: The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman review – great art and monstrous selfishness

Washington Post: The art of rebellion: The son of a famous painter tries to reframe his life

With his own artistic aspirations, he's constantly torn between exploiting his relationship to the famous man or proving that he can succeed on his own merits. In the end, Pinch can't do either, which is just the kind of slowly grinding humiliation that Rachman's wit captures so tenderly.

In interview on The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers:

Its syntax pure

The busker in the metro tunnels this morning was strumming out Satie's Gymnopédies, and it made the walk from the station to work feel like some misty confusion.

I finished Ian McEwan's Amsterdam last night. Very enjoyable. And funny. Especially the bits in the editorial offices.

"On this paper 'hopefully' is not a sentence adverb, nor will it ever be, specially in a leader for Godsakes. And none..." He trailed away for dramatic effect, while pretending to scan the piece. "'None' usually takes a singular verb. Can we get these two things generally understood?"

Vernon was aware of the approval round the table. This was the kind of thing the grammarians liked to hear. Together they would see the paper into the grave with its syntax pure.

I've never worked on a newspaper, but I know these battles well, and I'm no stranger to the struggle to balance editorial integrity with profit, which theme is central to one of the plots.

Both the main characters are fairly despicable, for different reasons, and they deserve what they get. So it seems McEwan is hit or miss with me, and Amsterdam's a hit.

(Though, if we're talking editorial, The Imperfectionists was a far more engrossing read.)

I received a copy of The Illumination, by Kevin Brockmeier, last week, and the review in Salon had me eager to read it next. Even though already it makes me sad. (Not in a maudlin way, in a good way. ["'What's good about sad?' It's happy, for deep people.'"] But it seems Brockmeier's world is a little less illuminated in this respect: Divorced young women without children but with decent jobs collect alimony. Really? Still? The dust jacket buckles a little because it got snowed on. Sometimes I care about these things, sometimes I don't.

I've spent much of my day thinking I may never write anything like a novel, because, after an evening, yesterday, of his pouting and my not being able to say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing, I know such a novel would be full of the wrong things, to be taken personally.

Inertia and continued employment cease to be mutually tenable

Arthur's cubicle used to be near the watercooler, but the bosses tired of having to chat with him each time they got thirsty. So the watercooler stayed and he was moved. Now his desk is in a distant corner, as far from the locus of power as possible but nearer the cupboard of pens, which is a consolation.

He arrives at work, flops into his rolling chair, and remains still. This persists until inertia and continued employment cease to be mutually tenable, at which point he wriggles off his overcoat, flicks on the computer, and checks the news reports.

No one has died. Or, rather, 107 people have in the previous minute, 154,000 in the past day, and 1,078,000 in the past week. But no one who matters. That's good — it has been nine days since his last obit, and he hopes to extend the streak. His overarching goal at the paper is indolence, to publish as infrequently as possible, and to sneak away when no one is looking. He is realizing these professional ambitions spectacularly.

— from The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman.

I'm barely a quarter of the way into this book, but I'm loving it. It's funny and poignant, and a whole lot of other things besides.

At this point it seems more like a series of connected stories than a novel per se, but we'll see how it unfolds. The stories, the people, all circle round an English-language newspaper in Rome.

It feels right to be reading this just as I'm starting a new job in an editorial environment completely different from what I'm used to. It's not a newspaper, but the publication cycle for a good deal of the work is close to every-other-day-ly, so there's a buzz and a busy-ness that make going to work kind of exciting.

Editorial is just a small part of this business in a sector that I know rather little about. I am relying on osmosis to get up to speed, but that shouldn't be such a feat when the people around me spend their days talking, hashing out ideas and problems and other ways of thinking about things in a fairly passionate way. They are not imperfectionists. We have several watercoolers.

Overheard the other day: "The granularity of the content is one." I don't know what that means, but I can't wait to find out.