The Tale of the Literary Rat
Hey everyone! Every month or so I get recommendations from the Tattered Cover Bookstore. If you've ever been lucky enough to go to this bookstore, you'll know why I take these recs seriously. The TC is simply the best bookstore in the world - or at least the part of the world I've been to. Shakespeare's in Paris is a close second, thanks to its history. When I lived in Denver, my weekly visit to the Lodo store provided a much needed respite. Cyd actually dated a guy who lived above the TC. I could not imagine the bliss of having such an address. And now there's a new TC on Colfax, replacing the one in Cherry Creek. I've yet to venture there, but this seems like a good move to me. In their last newsletter, the TC recommended a new book called Firmin, by Sam Savage. The next day I went to the library and sure enough it was among the new releases. Kismet.
Firmin is Sam Savage's first published work. His picture on the back of the book showed a hagard looking man complete with long white hair and beard. Though he got a PhD from Yale in philosoply, it says his past jobs were everything from a bicycle repairman to a commercial fisherman. Needless to say, my interest was piqued. Between the author bio and the summary of the book - it's about a rat who lives in a bookstore and develops the ability to read - I was extremely excited to begin reading this book, particularly since I was bent on finishing 1984 when I got my hot little hands on my copy. I gleefully told Thomas, mom and Creede all about it. And the latter two at least were also anxious to read it.
And then I read this gem of a first paragraph and I was even more convinced that this book could break into my top ten: "I had always imagined that my life story, if and when I wrote it, would have a great first line: something lyric like Nabokov's "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins"; or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping like Tolstoy's "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." People remember those words even when they have forgotten everything else about the books. When it comes to openers, though, the best in my view has to be the beginning of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier; "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." I've read that one dozens of times and it still knocks my socks off. Ford Madox Ford was a Big One."
All of this leads me to the following; Firmin was not what I expected. When I think of a literary rat, I think whimsical. Not so Firmin. It turns out if you're a rat who can read, but can't speak, you lead a bit of a tortured existence. Firmin has many of the primal instincts of a rat, but thanks to his exposure to works of fiction and non-fiction alike, he is a thinker, a dreamer, a brooder. And he's terminally unhappy with his inability to convince the humans around him that he knows more about books than they do. The two humans he is obsessed with are Norman, the owner of a bookstore where Firmin makes his nest and Jerry, a radical writer who takes Firmin on as a pet.
Firmin is set in Boston's Scollay Square, a hardscrabble neighborhood that is being dismantled by the government. The city has given up providing services to the neighborhood so there's garbage rotting everywhere, making it a rat's paradise. I kept wondering as I read it if this really happened. My curiosity was satisfied by the the author note at the end. Savage states that Scollay Square did exist and that it was demolished in the 1960s to be replaced by the ominous sounding Government Center.
So that was an interesting bit of history I learned. Another thing I picked up was an album recommendation: No Sun in Venice by Modern Jazz Quartet. Thanks to Thomas's Rhapsody service, I was able to read part of the book to this album, one I surprisingly enjoyed. I'm fairly distrustful of jazz thanks to my most hated elective of all time. At SMU I took an Evolution of Jazz class thinking it would be an easy A and a much needed break from the horrors of Fortran and Calculus. My teacher came to class each day dressed in a sweatsuit and a tie. His pretensions knew no bounds. My detestation of him was also boundless and rubbed off on jazz as well. His teaching was an absolute mystery to me. We seemed to spend more time analyzing Earth, Wind and Fire than anything else. I was awarded a B- for my efforts. Obviously, I have yet to get over it. But it's good to know that No Sun in Venice is out there.
Back to Firmin. I can say that I'm glad I read the book and did enjoy parts of it. Savage has a much apparent love of books - and any reader who loves books will enjoy some of his observations on The Big Ones. Firmin just wasn't what I was looking for after 1984. There was a dearth of the much anticipated whimsy. And that was just something I couldn't forgive at the time. I instead got a big dose of Firmin's depression caused by the purgatory he finds himself in. After that perfect first paragraph, Savage writes about how for some books it's impossible for the book to live up to that first sentence. Was this some type of caveat emptor to the reader? Perhaps, because this was the case with Firmin.
-sunday
Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: Jesus Saves. Buddha Invests.
Firmin is Sam Savage's first published work. His picture on the back of the book showed a hagard looking man complete with long white hair and beard. Though he got a PhD from Yale in philosoply, it says his past jobs were everything from a bicycle repairman to a commercial fisherman. Needless to say, my interest was piqued. Between the author bio and the summary of the book - it's about a rat who lives in a bookstore and develops the ability to read - I was extremely excited to begin reading this book, particularly since I was bent on finishing 1984 when I got my hot little hands on my copy. I gleefully told Thomas, mom and Creede all about it. And the latter two at least were also anxious to read it.
And then I read this gem of a first paragraph and I was even more convinced that this book could break into my top ten: "I had always imagined that my life story, if and when I wrote it, would have a great first line: something lyric like Nabokov's "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins"; or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping like Tolstoy's "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." People remember those words even when they have forgotten everything else about the books. When it comes to openers, though, the best in my view has to be the beginning of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier; "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." I've read that one dozens of times and it still knocks my socks off. Ford Madox Ford was a Big One."
All of this leads me to the following; Firmin was not what I expected. When I think of a literary rat, I think whimsical. Not so Firmin. It turns out if you're a rat who can read, but can't speak, you lead a bit of a tortured existence. Firmin has many of the primal instincts of a rat, but thanks to his exposure to works of fiction and non-fiction alike, he is a thinker, a dreamer, a brooder. And he's terminally unhappy with his inability to convince the humans around him that he knows more about books than they do. The two humans he is obsessed with are Norman, the owner of a bookstore where Firmin makes his nest and Jerry, a radical writer who takes Firmin on as a pet.
Firmin is set in Boston's Scollay Square, a hardscrabble neighborhood that is being dismantled by the government. The city has given up providing services to the neighborhood so there's garbage rotting everywhere, making it a rat's paradise. I kept wondering as I read it if this really happened. My curiosity was satisfied by the the author note at the end. Savage states that Scollay Square did exist and that it was demolished in the 1960s to be replaced by the ominous sounding Government Center.
So that was an interesting bit of history I learned. Another thing I picked up was an album recommendation: No Sun in Venice by Modern Jazz Quartet. Thanks to Thomas's Rhapsody service, I was able to read part of the book to this album, one I surprisingly enjoyed. I'm fairly distrustful of jazz thanks to my most hated elective of all time. At SMU I took an Evolution of Jazz class thinking it would be an easy A and a much needed break from the horrors of Fortran and Calculus. My teacher came to class each day dressed in a sweatsuit and a tie. His pretensions knew no bounds. My detestation of him was also boundless and rubbed off on jazz as well. His teaching was an absolute mystery to me. We seemed to spend more time analyzing Earth, Wind and Fire than anything else. I was awarded a B- for my efforts. Obviously, I have yet to get over it. But it's good to know that No Sun in Venice is out there.
Back to Firmin. I can say that I'm glad I read the book and did enjoy parts of it. Savage has a much apparent love of books - and any reader who loves books will enjoy some of his observations on The Big Ones. Firmin just wasn't what I was looking for after 1984. There was a dearth of the much anticipated whimsy. And that was just something I couldn't forgive at the time. I instead got a big dose of Firmin's depression caused by the purgatory he finds himself in. After that perfect first paragraph, Savage writes about how for some books it's impossible for the book to live up to that first sentence. Was this some type of caveat emptor to the reader? Perhaps, because this was the case with Firmin.
-sunday
Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: Jesus Saves. Buddha Invests.
posted by Sunday at
4:16 PM
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