Tom Rachman
Tom Rachman
Tom Rachman is an English/Canadian novelist. His debut novel is The Imperfectionists, published in 2010 by Dial Press, an imprint of Random House. The book has been published in 25 languages...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
copy editor found returning savings six taking time took until work
The way I found time to write 'The Imperfectionists' was that I took work as a copy editor at the 'International Herald Tribune' in Paris, working full-time for approximately six months, then taking my savings from that and writing full-time, then returning after six months, and so on, until the book was done!
aggressive drawn encounter high shocking work worse
There are journalists who are drawn to the most extroverted, aggressive jobs because they get an ego high from it. It can be shocking to encounter them and even worse to work with them.
accustomed ask content given happened hard initially newspapers pay people
The question I ask myself is what would have happened if newspapers hadn't initially given their content away for free on the Internet. It's so hard to get people to pay once they are accustomed to having something for free.
history mind nyu school study theory toronto university
I went to the University of Toronto to study the history and theory of film, in the back of my mind thinking I'd go to NYU film school and see if I could make a career of it.
business entered left nearly news notions toronto turned
When I left Toronto and entered journalism in the late 1990s, I had many notions about the news business, nearly all of them wrong, as it turned out.
agency news rarely time york
My own career started in New York at the 'Associated Press', a fast-paced news agency where we rarely had time for deep reporting.
family precocious
I hadn't been a particularly precocious reader, but everybody else in my family was.
among elements favorite obituaries proper stories
Obituaries were among my favorite to write because they have elements no other news stories have - a story from start to finish with a proper conclusion.
drawn eventually experience fiction gain hope hoped intent question thrilling
My intent was to gain experience for fiction I eventually hoped to write. But there's no question I was drawn in by the hope that journalism would be a creative, thrilling environment.
ashamed collection embarrass nor pretend slightly weird
Many things embarrass me, but reading isn't one of them. I'm not ashamed of my slightly weird collection of prison memoirs. Nor the flaky meditation books. After all, I can pretend I never read those.
fit reporter seen truth
I had pictured journalism as I'd seen it in the most ennobling films, where the reporter battles for the truth, propelled by conviction, and is triumphant. There are journalists who fit that ideal.
art talked
I don't like most contemporary art. But I think if you talked to any person who's heavily involved in contemporary art, they'd say the same thing. If you go to a biennale, you don't expect to like much of it.
fill notion pages toss
At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.
strength
The strength of fiction is not in reading about yourself, but in reading about other people.