AUTUMN 2006 READ THIS! - FIRMIN BY SAM SAVAGE

The Litblog Co-op is pleased to announce its Autumn 2006 Read This! Selection: Firmin by Sam Savage (Coffee House Press, 2006). The weeks ahead will include a chat with the author and discussion about Firmin by members of the LBC.

We will remind you of the other considered titles over the next two days, and having week-long discussions and posts by LBC members taking up the pros and cons of each title. Firmin will be discussed the week of November 6th, three weeks away, which you gives you plenty of time to find the book, read it, and join the discussion.

Now we present Ed Champion, who nominated Firmin, as he explains why you should Read This!

I picked it up at BEA. The only thing I knew about it was that this was a story told from the perspective of a rat. I figured that, at the very least, this would be great airplane reading, something that might serve in lieu of or, if mediocre, in addition to those tiny little bottles they charge you too much money for. After all, the book was slim and, given BEA’s commercial atmosphere, a tale told by a rodent seemed only fitting on the way back to San Francisco.

I was entirely unprepared to read a wry and remarkably thoughtful book about the state of imagination in American society. The book had teeth, perhaps a continuously growing set of rodent-like incisors ground to manageable size so that the teeth in question wouldn’t puncture the brain. Sam Savage had kept the page count lean, but certainly hadn’t skimped out on the thoughtful ambiguities beyond it.

I don’t believe there’s any way to describe the book without it sounding preposterous, but the book concerns itself with Firmin, a rat who, through mere taste, has the capacity to read literature at an astonishing rate. He scurries through Boston’s infamous Scollay Square, just before the square was cemented over by the City of Boston, attending peep shows and exploring the interconnected buildings, in search of food and in search of meaning. Abandoned by his family and unable to interact with his humans, save through recurrent allusions to people he’s “talked to” at bars, he retreats instead into books, finding solace and a new existence. A pulp science fiction writer named Jerry Magoon takes Firmin under his care, offering compassion and unintentional enlightenment. But residing at the center of all of this is a more troubling dilemma: Firmin is alone and books serve as a way, perhaps the only way, for him to subsist.

The books, however, are Firmin’s downfall, as apocalyptic in nature as Scollay Square’s sad fate and Magoon’s visions. Even from the onset, Firmin cannot settle upon a proper first line to describe his story. That Firmin himself boasts of gorging upon the books instead of understanding what’s inside them suggests a character willing to grope at anything to fight a terrible isolation that he is often vague or disingenuous about. And could it be that the tale we are reading here is not one written by a rat, but one of an outcast so thoroughly ignored by society, that he is reduced to feeding on humanity’s leftovers?

That Savage suggests all this without sacrificing his panache for gallows humor (such as Firmin’s first experience with rat poison pellets) is a testament of his talent. Firmin challenges our narrative assumptions by presenting us with a tale told by a rat, signifying perhaps both nothing and everything, about the relationship between reality and fiction. It can be read as a literal entertainment or a multilayered parable about gentrification and the palliatives and pitfalls of imagination.

It is a novel well worth your time.

Comments

[Max]

Last night I had a dream that I was secretly living in a bookstore, hiding from the people during the day and hanging out at night. I don't think I was a rat, though. Still, I guess I'm pretty excited Firmin being our pick this time around.

[S.J. Flynn]

I read this book, ok I started reading this book. In fact I helped choose it for a book club at a local chain bookstore because it sounded so interesting. I just couldn’t finish it. I liked the premise of the book, but I didn’t’ like the presentation. The extended metaphor of consuming books is great. “I noticed first that each book had a different flavor.” But I couldn’t stand being stuck in the rat’s head continuously. At times the book amounted to a showy display of all the books the author had ever read. I know it’s about the isolating worlds that reading and writing can become, but the presentation seemed incomplete as a strictly first person presentation.

[nbm]

You didn't mention the cool inky illustrations! I enjoyed this slim book a great deal.

[Phil]

This is one of the most thoughtful and entertaining novels I've read in a while. It's hard not to get caught up in the nostalgia of it. It's hard not to somehow feel for the perspective of a ... rat. How did he do that? I never cared for rats before. Whenever I read first rat narratives I tend to enjoy it more if I can identify with the protagonist; in this novel I really did. This rat is, well, very human. Curious, hard, hungry, perservering, critical, etc. I loved the literary references that I caught, and felt challenged by the ones I'm sure I missed. I also felt the outrage of the forgotten rats of the world, the ones that progress razes and paves over. Savage makes it clear that part of nature is that some things change and some do not.

[Kevin Holtsberry]

I got the book in the mail and plan to read it soon. Should be an interesting discussion.

[Bill Ectric]

I'm halfway thru the book and I love it!

[swb.]

Firmin has been chosen as one of the 3 finalists for the Discover New Writers Award in Fiction. It is Barnes & Noble's annual award given to new authors (one in fiction and one in non fiction). The winner will be announced at the end of the month.