Cosmopolitan story set in the Italian art world
Tom Rachman’s third novel is moving but lackadaisical
Hero-worship can get you sniggered at, which is always unpleasant — but surely pales in comparison with the discovery that the object of your veneration is a monster. Nobody depicts the resulting psychological trauma in as sensitive and moving a fashion as Tom Rachman: in his second novel, The Rise & Fall of Great
Powers, and now in his third, The Italian Teacher.
Unfortunately, in The Italian Teacher, Rachman proves so keen on demonstrating how Charles “Pinch” Bavinsky’s life is time and again impinged upon by his enduring childlike reverence for his father, renowned American painter Bear Bavinsky, that the story assumes a pitying tone toward its protagonist. Even more problematic? Pinch takes forever to realize that his father has wronged him and his mother, failing to contemplate redress until well into the tale’s second half.
When Pinch is in college, his mother Natalie (who happens to be Canadian) tells him: “It’s so hard to believe we were together. Don’t you find?” She’s referring to her long-since terminated marriage to his father, a union that effectively derailed her promising career as a ceramic artist. “Anyway,” she continues, “the force of will in Bear is incredible. I envy him that. You need to be selfish as an artist — that’s why it’s so much harder for a woman.”
That should give you an idea of Bear’s insufferable nature. There’s also this earlier put-down of his son when he, 15 and desperate for Dad’s praise, unveils a painting at which he’s painstakingly laboured: “I got to tell you, kiddo. You’re not an artist. And you never will be.”
Alas, Pinch takes his father’s cutting remarks to heart … and stops painting. Worse, he nurses a grudge against his mother for having convinced him that he possesses a talent worth cultivating.
The Italian Teacher, related in the present tense by a third-person narrator, spans the seven decades of Pinch’s drab and disappointing existence, from the 1950s until today. Whether it’s Rome, where Pinch grows up; Toronto, where he attends college; or London, where he becomes a teacher of Italian at a language institute, Rachman effortlessly breathes life into the troubled character’s surroundings. The author has clearly drawn on his own cosmopolitanism; London-born, Vancouver-domiciled and University of Toronto-educated, Rachman was for a time an Associated Press correspondent in Rome (an experience reflected in his first novel, The Imperfectionists).
Mordecai Richler maintained that it is a writer’s duty to serve as the loser’s advocate. In The Italian Teacher, Rachman has done just that — even devising a plausible way for his beleaguered protagonist to hit back at a father who exploited him and a world that consigned him to the role of that father’s lackey.
Yet until Pinch exacts (artistic) revenge, thereby giving the proceedings some much-needed oomph, the story remains decidedly anemic. Moreover, the contours of his crafty plan for such retribution take shape exceedingly late. In the meantime, Pinch is no more than a long-suffering character mired in a lackadaisical tale.