Lit Love & Rats

Levi Asher writes:

Before I read Firmin, my favorite literary rat had been Templeton from E. B. White's Charlotte's Web. Templeton, if you remember, was a slob and a complainer, but he came charmingly to life once a year when the State Fair came to town. He waited until dark, when all the people left, then threw himself into a nightly orgy of food scraps. Humans meant nothing to Templeton, except that they brought food.

Like Templeton, Firmin is all rat. The two creatures have little in common and would not have been friends, but both are distinctly non-human, even though Firmin yearns to be human while Templeton just yearns to eat like one. I agree with Jessica that the "goodbye zipper" scene was one of the best moments in Firmin, and this scene shows how lost Firmin is in the world of humans, because he hilariously fails to understand that the phrase "goodbye zipper" (which he chose because it is easy for a rat to sign-speak) does not mean anything and will not help him make friends with strangers in the park.

Likewise, despite the fact that he is in love with books, his understanding of these books seems limited (despite the fact that he rhapsodizes -- sometimes unconvincingly -- about them). He reminds me of Helen, the intelligent computer network in Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 -- both Helen and Firmin are voracious readers, but they both seem to miss a lot of the meaning of what they read.

All in all, I agree with Jessica that while Sam Savage's rat is a fascinating metaphor for a human, it does not help the book to understand the character as some type of actual human. Maybe the whole equation should be reversed -- in several scenes, such as the tragic incident with the rat poison or the final vision of a destroyed neighborhood in downtown Boston, the question may be whether or not humans are rats.

Edward Champion writes:

To jump from Jessica's point, one thing we haven't talked about is how Savage presents the world of rats. Firmin, for example, is unapologetically scatological about lusting after his sister.  In exploring the vicinity outside of the bookstore, he is quite familiar with the nooks and crevices that have been placed by previous generations of rats.  And he expresses some disgust over how the rats are ignoble scavengers. 

And yet Firmin also makes reference to people he has talked to in bars and presents us with details that often wane as swiftly as Scollay Square: Where, for example, does Firmin's family, featured in the beginning, disappear to?  Why do the items in Jerry Magoon's apartment disappear? 

If we consider the possibility that Firmin himself is not a rat, that this identity is a fictive construct he clings to like a poor man's palliative, then we must consider that the universe around Firmin is also a fictional construct.  And yet, if fiction stems from some kind of inspiration from the real world, what (if we are to accept this "Firmin ain't a rat" hypothesis) is real? 

To jump back to Mr. Asher's observations, is the rat just as much of a triggering point for fantasy as the books are?

Comments

[Jessica]

Ed - with all due respect, I took each of Firmin's references to "a guy he talked to in a bar" to be a sort of shorthand for his fantasy life: the same one where he seduces Ginger Rogers and wears a trenchcoat, the fantasy life (in which he is a human) that he admits to having early in the book. Firmin rapidly separates from the rat world in thought, but not in action. If he is somehow a dream of himself, most of the book doesn't make sense to me: hiding in the ceiling, crawling through walls, scavenging for popcorn, etc. It's an interesting idea to think of the fantasy-within-a-fantasy, of Firmin as some kind of feral, lonely person imagining he's a rat who's imagining he's a person, but I don't think it's there in the novel. I think Savage made Firmin "human" but not human: his thoughts, his existential predicament, are ours, but he's a real rat, alright.

But this does seem to be something there's a fair amount of debate about, so maybe I'm wrong and the boundaries are more fluid than that. The whole story is theoretically being "told" (though I think that's just a narrative construct, since Firmin has no one to tell this to and no way to write it down) as he's finally dying of old age, hallucinating while Scollay Square falls down around him. Who's to know which part is "real" fiction and which part is fictitious fiction? Firmin's either an unreliable narrator or confused about the nature of fact and fiction -- which makes sense since the realest part of his life has been spent in fictional worlds.

(Hmmm, I hope this doesn't have any application to litbloggers...)

[Anne]

I think Firmin is really a rat but I love the tangle that Ed's question gets us into.

This is not a realist novel. So, at some point we accept some things and dismiss others as fantasy. We accept a rat who can read but not one who can write; we accept a rat who befriends a person and learns sign language, but not one who talks. I find this all funny and magical and fascinating: it makes me want to go back to the exact moment in the book where, believing in a rat capable of literary judgment, I confidently reject the possibility of his talking ot a guy in the bar. What in the language signals that difference?

For me, what's important about the rat is that, like Kafka's cockroach, it exaggerates and dramatizes the poignant dilemma of any enthusiastic reader: the more we read, the more life pales in comparison and thus, the more we turn back to books, only to find life all the paler.

[Anne]

(All of which is to say that, yes, Jessica, alas, I think the application to litbloggers is pretty definitively spot on! : ) )

[viagra online]

Many cultures have stories describing the origin of the world, which may be roughly grouped into common types. In one type of story, the world is born from a world egg; such stories include the Finnish epic poem Kalevala, the Chinese story of Pangu or the Indian Brahmanda Purana. In related stories, the creation is caused by a single entity emanating or producing something by his or herself, as in the Tibetan Buddhism concept of Adi-Buddha, the ancient Greek story of Gaia (Mother Earth), the Aztec goddess Coatlicue myth, the ancient Egyptian god Atum story, or the Genesis creation myth. In another type of story, the world is created from the union of male and female deities, as in the Maori story of Rangi and Papa.

[Instant Loans]

Handy site this - covers a lot of books.

[collector baseball cards]

the information in this blog is very interesting !!!!! I have not read Firmin!! I'd like to read it to make a criteria of what is reading! know where I can get?

[viagra online]

This is such a fabulously intriguing idea, these books that will never be written. And now I so want to read them all, mostly due to your skill with evocative covers. I look at them and feel the story within. Or the story that could be within. I'm not sure if I should thank you or curse you...

[Caverta Online]

To be honest, this article made me understand the genuineness. I understood many things, Related to the topic. I keep on wondering why people keep on wondering so much on the topic. People should start reading your blog in order to get maximum information on the stuff. Things will become more significant after reading your articles. The way these article are full of information and the comments posted show the popularity of your posts.

[Health News]

Thank you for introducing me the wonderful information.And .....Totally boring.!

[Discount Cigarettes]

torn to pieces - a great song by Death

[toshiba camileo s20]

This reminds me of John Donne's "The Flea", where a flea (or rather, the flea's bite) becomes a metaphor for the consumation of the act of love... at least taht's what the male narrator tries to sell the lady/object of desire of the poem. Thanks for the post!

[reverse phone lookup]

Like Templeton, Firmin is all rat.

[Herve Leger]

Work is more that a necessary for most human beings; it is the focus of their lives , the souece of their identity and creativity. (Leonard R.Sayles, British writer)