The Imperfectionists: A Novel by Rachman Tom

Author:Rachman, Tom [Rachman, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781588369741
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

1963. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME

With Betty out of the picture, Leo assumed full control of the paper and declared that his first goal was to raise status. Whether he meant the paper’s status or his own was a matter of debate.

His obsession was “marquee pieces,” which he defined as articles to make you fall over at the newsstand. However, he distrusted his own staff to produce anything that good, so he purchased the stories from outside writers, which endeared him to no one at the office. The atmosphere grew increasingly toxic; the old collegial days were over.

Circulation declined marginally, but Leo claimed that the readership had merely grown more refined. When corresponding with the board in Atlanta, he pledged to cut costs, but privately he was cocky. After all, Charles had tipped his hand: he’d said the paper was untouchable.

In 1969, Charles stepped down as chairman of the board and Ott’s son, Boyd, age twenty-seven, took over. Leo sent Boyd a letter of congratulations, with a hint that more cash would be timely—the paper could do with a few new hands. Instead, Boyd got rid of an old one: Leo himself.

The justification was that Leo had betrayed the paper and its late founder. Ott had left his family, had toiled day and night, to build a publication that served the world, Boyd said. But Leo had turned the paper into little more than a personal fiefdom. Boyd even alleged that Leo had altered the masthead to shrink “Founded by Cyrus Ott (1899–1960)” and enlarge “Editor-in-Chief: Leopold T. Marsh.” A measuring stick seemed to prove the point.

Leo lingered around the capitals of Europe for a while, nosing about for a route back into the international press. In the end, he returned to the United States, taking home a before-breakfast Cognac habit and scant cash. He accepted a job in Pittsburgh running a trade publication on the coal industry and was lucky to get it.

Boyd pledged to lead the search for a replacement editor-in-chief but proved too absorbed by the rest of the Ott empire. He had grand ambitions and began by selling off many long-standing holdings, even the sugar refinery that had started it all, in favor of speculative investments overseas. It was audacious—just the sort of thing his father would have done.

Or so Boyd believed.

For he had barely known Ott, who left for Europe when Boyd was eleven. He had not even been born during his father’s fabled early days, when Ott had built an empire from nothing. Most of what Boyd knew about those times came from sundry courtiers nibbling at the edges of the family fortune.

Still, these myths spurred him on. He was bold because his father had been, and proud because this, too, had been Ott’s fashion. Yet Boyd’s boldness lacked pleasure, and his pride lacked dignity. He styled himself a man of the people, as his father had been. But the people mistrusted Boyd, and he in turn despised them.

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