Off the Record: A Novel

by Craig Sherborne

I have knocked on flyscreens and said to mothers of kidnapped toddlers, ‘Don’t you feel guilty for leaving your child in the front yard alone?’ I have shamed them to tears for the photographer. I have gatecrashed funerals, linked innocent corpses to local crime syndicates. Or feigned empathy to the grief-stricken to make copy from their hard-luck stories. I enjoyed the kudos of my name beneath headlines on front pages and became used to the heartlessness as if blank inside. I was doing it for my family—it was worth the cruelty.

That line of work gives your eyes a plastic appearance. I’ve noticed it in the mirror, a dead glitter.

Callum Smith—Wordsmith, Words for short—is a newspaper journalist of the old school. He knows how to write a story that sings, knows all the tricks of the tabloid trade. And he likes to drink with his colleagues, sometimes to flirt dangerously with young women.

When his marriage blows up after a night of drinking goes way too far, Words is forced to leave the family home. Desperate to impress his estranged wife and feckless teenage son, he quits his job, taking a pay cut to work with a new online publication covering local crime. There the plum role of editor will soon be his, he reasons.

To Words, ‘Honesty is a thief—it steals your life.’ Better to do whatever it takes to get back in someone’s good books. And that is what he sets out to do, in a series of ever more calamitous, destructive and amoral adventures.

Will the irredeemable Words win back his family? Or is comeuppance around the corner?

A satirical novel by Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisted author Craig Sherborne, Off the Record stylishly skewers tabloid journalism and male vanity.

Genres: Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

Published January 29, 2018

About the author

Craig Sherborne, a Melbourne based poet and playwright, was educated at Scots College in Sydney before attending drama school in London. He worked as a journalist for Melbourne based newspapers, was a senior writer with the Melbourne Sun, and is published in literary journals and anthologies.

Sherborne's play, 'The Ones Out of Town', won the Wal Cherry Play of the Year Award in 1989. His radio play, 'Table Leg', won the Ian Reed Foundation Fellowship for new writing for radio in 1991.

The ABC commissioned work from him including 'The Pike Harvest' (1992). His verse-drama, Look at Everything Twice for Me, was published by Currency Press, his first volume of poetry, Bullion, by Penguin in 1995, and his second, Necessary Evil, by Black Inc. in 2005.

Craig Sherborne's memoir Hoi Polloi was published in 2005; it was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.. Its sequel, Muck, was published in 2007 and won the Queensland Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 2008.

Craig’s first novel, The Amateur Science of Love, won the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Best Writing Award, and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and a NSW Premier’s Literary Award.

Reviews

[Text Publishing]

‘Reading this novel is like watching a rabbit caught in the headlights of a vehicle. There’s an awful fascination, almost a voyeuristic delight, in watching a man dig himself deeper into a hole of amoral sensationalism.’
Good Reading

‘Callum “Words” Smith is an egocentric, chauvinistic, manipulative scumbag: a detestable man. But he is a brilliant character…He is a terrible person but somehow you find yourself rooting for him. It is a tribute to Craig Sherborne, who has created a character embodying all that is wrong with journalism, yet made him human enough to be likeable. It is grounded in the humour the author employs…Sherborne, a former journalist, sheds light on the industry with comedy and subtle sensitivity.’
Otago Daily Times

‘Certain of his skewed world view, there’s a perverse delight in watching Words work, and an even greater one in watching him unravel…A smug satire of old school journalism and male pride.’
AU Review

‘This novel is a demonstration of Sherborne’s virtuosity as a writer.’
Australian Book Review

‘Monstrous yet moving.’
New Zealand Herald

‘A satirical romp through the seedy undergrowth of a headline hunter.’
North & South

‘Ambiguous, funny, and refreshingly unwise.’
Monthly

'Sharp, taut and sizzlingly mean, Off The Record paints a biting portrait of a hard-boiled hack you would not want on your back…It is an expertly crafted almost-satire, that, though billed as dark comedy, is a cautionary tale about the true cost of selling your professional and creative soul, and of unbridled vanity. Ruthlessly riveting.’
Herald Sun

‘Off the Record, a page-turner so scorching it makes realism seem like a form of pornography, is about sensationalist and exploitative journalism…The narrator is such a supreme wordsmith, as Sherborne was and is, that he is known as Words, and boy can he use them as acid and anthrax in the world’s water supply…It is part of Sherborne’s genius — it’s not too big a word — to revile and deconstruct every tabernacle of good taste…Pacy, sleek, muscled…A mesmerising portrait of how a creep of a guy (who can look very much like you or me) can weave a web in which he finds himself.’
Peter Craven, Australian

[Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolute let down. Does not live up to reviews. Was looking forward to an amusing denouement of tabloid journalism. Isn't.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Off the Record is a deliciously droll satire. It's Craig Sherborne's third novel, following on from The Amateur Science of Love (which I really liked when I reviewed back in 2011) and Tree Palace (2014) which I put on my wishlist but #SmacksForehead forgot to buy.
Callum 'Wordsmith' Smith, a.k.a. 'Words' is a tabloid journalist whose marriage is in trouble. He's a pedantic neat-freak, picky about grammar and tidiness but not above faking outrage stories or making up lies about the man he thinks is wooing his estranged wife.
Words is alternately brutally honest with himself and self-deluded. Sherborne (who used to be a journo for the tabloid 'Melbourne Sun' a.k.a. The Melbourne Daily Astonisher') skewers the methodology of tabloid journalists. Here's Words admitting his tactics while falling prey to what's called Noble Cause Corruption i.e. believing that the ends justify the means:

I, Words, am a provider and required to earn wages. In the service of which I have knocked on flyscreens and said to mothers of kidnapped toddlers, ‘Don’t you feel guilty for leaving your child in the front yard alone?’ I have shamed them to tears for the photographer. I have gatecrashed funerals, linked innocent corpses to local crime syndicates. Or feigned empathy to the grief-stricken to make copy from their hard-luck stories. I enjoyed the kudos of my name beneath headlines on front pages and became used to the heartlessness as if blank inside. I was doing it for my family—it was worth the cruelty. (p.4)

and

There is an equation to shame where wrongdoing is converted to rightness. It requires no thinking - it does the reasoning itself. My asking Ollie [his son] to spy was a shameful act for a father, but my religion of family made it dutiful. (p.49)

Hmm. This is a man whose religion of family does not preclude a one-night stand with an ad rep - sex of the clothes-on, standing-up kind that no one could call by the wholesome word lovemaking. His idea of self-reflection is to regret his own honesty in telling his wife about it, so that by confessing, the great gesture of being honest would void the sin. He seems genuinely surprised by their estrangement and maintains throughout the novel a naïve optimism that all he has to do is stage-manage various reconciliatory gestures and the marriage will be ok. No woman reading his litany of self-deception is going to be convinced. Sherborne structures his novel so that readers are more likely to be barracking for Emma to give him the heave-ho as fast as she can!

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/03/17/o...

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't help liking this book even though the protagonist, Words, a tabloid journalist, is so unlikeable and it's a testament to the author's skill that you're compelled to keep reading, regardless. It's like watching a car crash - it's horrible but you can't take your eyes off it. Reading this book I was constantly cringing at the depths Words would go to in order to get a story and what he would do and say to try and win his wife back. It was also a clever satire on the world of news and journalism.

[Stacey Farley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much hope it's not autobiographical. Protagonist a twat.

[Victoria Lane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an unlikeable main character and plot, hard to get past.