Sam Savage, “Firmin”, Coffee House Press, 2006.
I should drink less coffee, I know that, because it drives me so crazy that I could turn over all my shelves just to chat with you about the books that I read. But I really need coffee, otherwise I would sleep all day long. I tried a few years ago to become the official Duracell mascot but they refused, claiming that I was far less famous than the white rabbit. So, I drink coffee. Especially on Tuesdays. Why Tuesday? Easy to understand: Tuesdays here are busy days.
So, last Tuesday in the late afternoon, I abandoned a thousand things I had to do and went to the supermarket. My six children are always hungry. Sometimes I think to myself: “I don't have children, I have stomachs on legs. I was in the only shopping street in my village, my offspring following behind. “Come on, kids, it’s gonna be too late for shopping!” We were walking and I decided not to have a look around the bookshop, after one of my daughter had reminded me “Mom, you bought so many books this month!”
Easier said than done! I can't resist. In this library, you can find books very unusual and, in our little “Nowhere” I use to be the only shopper.
So, I was not supposed to notice this book: my daughter was threatening me with her big round eyes , "Mom, we want to buy pie! " " Yes, ok, I'm coming."
I move forward. Sidelong look. A new book, encircled by a yellow strip: "If reading is your pleasure, this book was written for you. " This book is calling me. It’s a real provocation!
Another step, backward. The title: "Firmin". The cover: an ugly sad rat, sitting on a mountain of books. The author: Sam Savage. "I don’t know him ..." “Mom, let’s go!” “Yes, I'm coming…”
An hesitation: "And if ever this book ..." In front of me, the children, impatient. Behind the window, the bookseller. "Hi! " he says shaking his hand. Suddenly, I am sure: there is no coincidence, only meetings, happy or unhappy. I just met a book. I want to know it.
Two hours later I had finished. Do you want me to tell you?
Boston in the Sixties. The cellar of a library as you have never seen it, full of treasures and rare books. Twelve rats born there. The mother is an alcoholic, fat and nasty. Firmin, the smallest, can never eat. It is obliged to chew paper. No other possibility to stay alive: swallowing words, pages, whole chapters. Everything is good enough to satisfy hunger: philosophy, astronomy, geography, the Bible, the Koran ...
One day, he realizes he can read, so he consumes less and less pages, only eating margins. Doctors are unanimous about him: this is a case of banal books bulimia.
Our friendly rat grows up in the recesses of the library, reading and reading the classics authors. He remains there when the whole family goes away, having no company except the old bookseller. Obviously, Firmin is a rat, an awful creature and he’s obliged to hide but when he dreams, this man becomes his best friend. Sometimes he thinks he is the hero of a novel, a movie star: Joyce, Faulkner and why not? Fred Aster.
But life is not a dream and Firmin will never be a movie star. The only wealth is the freedom he could have… But a rat is not able to speak, laugh or cry. He cannot communicate with humans. He cannot clap when he’s happy and rats have no heart. Nevertheless, his heart is worthy of a character in Flaubert.
You can see if you read this book, “Firmin” is not just the autobiography of a book-eating rat.
It is also the story of a quest: recognition, freedom, communication and sharing. Behind the adventures of a gifted rat, you can see effortlessly a beautiful metaphor: “Firmin”, it’s a life filled with dreams and illusions. And, shutting the book, I’m sure you’ll remember this sentence “If you are alone, I think it can help you if you are a little bit crazy.”
Extract
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 likeTolstoy’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.
In all my life struggling to write I have struggled with nothing so manfully – yes, that’s the word, manfully – as with openers. It has always seemed to me that if I could just get that bit right all the rest would follow automatically. I thought of that first sentence as a kind of semantic womb stuffed with the busy embryos of unwritten pages, brilliant little nuggets of genius practically panting to be born. From that grand vessel the entire story would, so to speak, ooze forth. What a delusion! Exactly the opposite was true. And it is not as if there weren’t any good ones. Savor this, for example: ‘When the phone rang at 3:00 a.m. Morris Monk knew even before picking up the receiver that the call was from a dame, and he knew something else too: dames meant trouble.’ Or this: ‘Just before being hacked to pieces by Gamel’s sadistic soldiers, Colonel Benchley had a vision of the little whitewashed cottage in Shropshire, and Mrs Benchley in the doorway, and the children.’ Or this: ‘Paris, London, Djibouti, all seemed unreal to him now as he sat amid the ruins of yet another Thanksgiving dinner with his mother and father and that idiot Charles.’ Who can remain unimpressed by sentences like these? They are so pregnant
with meaning, so, I dare say, poignant with it that they positively bulge with whole unwritten chapters – unwritten, but there, already there!
Alas, in reality they were nothing but bubbles, illusions every one. Each of the wonderful phrases, so full of promise, was like a gift-wrapped box clutched in a small child’s eager hand, a box that holds nothing but gravel and bits of trash, though it rattles oh so enticingly. He thinks it is candy! I thought it was literature. All those sentences – and many, many others as well – proved to be not springboards to the great unwritten novel but insurmountable barriers to it. You
see, they were too good. I could never live up to them. Some writers can never equal their first novel. I could never equal my first sentence. And look at me now. Look how I have begun this, my final work, my opus: ‘I had always imagined that my life story, if and when . . .’ Good God, ‘if and when’! You see the problem. Hopeless. Scratch it.
(Extract from Sam Savage, « Firmin »)
I should drink less coffee, I know that, because it drives me so crazy that I could turn over all my shelves just to chat with you about the books that I read. But I really need coffee, otherwise I would sleep all day long. I tried a few years ago to become the official Duracell mascot but they refused, claiming that I was far less famous than the white rabbit. So, I drink coffee. Especially on Tuesdays. Why Tuesday? Easy to understand: Tuesdays here are busy days.
So, last Tuesday in the late afternoon, I abandoned a thousand things I had to do and went to the supermarket. My six children are always hungry. Sometimes I think to myself: “I don't have children, I have stomachs on legs. I was in the only shopping street in my village, my offspring following behind. “Come on, kids, it’s gonna be too late for shopping!” We were walking and I decided not to have a look around the bookshop, after one of my daughter had reminded me “Mom, you bought so many books this month!”
Easier said than done! I can't resist. In this library, you can find books very unusual and, in our little “Nowhere” I use to be the only shopper.
So, I was not supposed to notice this book: my daughter was threatening me with her big round eyes , "Mom, we want to buy pie! " " Yes, ok, I'm coming."
I move forward. Sidelong look. A new book, encircled by a yellow strip: "If reading is your pleasure, this book was written for you. " This book is calling me. It’s a real provocation!
Another step, backward. The title: "Firmin". The cover: an ugly sad rat, sitting on a mountain of books. The author: Sam Savage. "I don’t know him ..." “Mom, let’s go!” “Yes, I'm coming…”
An hesitation: "And if ever this book ..." In front of me, the children, impatient. Behind the window, the bookseller. "Hi! " he says shaking his hand. Suddenly, I am sure: there is no coincidence, only meetings, happy or unhappy. I just met a book. I want to know it.
Two hours later I had finished. Do you want me to tell you?
Boston in the Sixties. The cellar of a library as you have never seen it, full of treasures and rare books. Twelve rats born there. The mother is an alcoholic, fat and nasty. Firmin, the smallest, can never eat. It is obliged to chew paper. No other possibility to stay alive: swallowing words, pages, whole chapters. Everything is good enough to satisfy hunger: philosophy, astronomy, geography, the Bible, the Koran ...
One day, he realizes he can read, so he consumes less and less pages, only eating margins. Doctors are unanimous about him: this is a case of banal books bulimia.
Our friendly rat grows up in the recesses of the library, reading and reading the classics authors. He remains there when the whole family goes away, having no company except the old bookseller. Obviously, Firmin is a rat, an awful creature and he’s obliged to hide but when he dreams, this man becomes his best friend. Sometimes he thinks he is the hero of a novel, a movie star: Joyce, Faulkner and why not? Fred Aster.
But life is not a dream and Firmin will never be a movie star. The only wealth is the freedom he could have… But a rat is not able to speak, laugh or cry. He cannot communicate with humans. He cannot clap when he’s happy and rats have no heart. Nevertheless, his heart is worthy of a character in Flaubert.
You can see if you read this book, “Firmin” is not just the autobiography of a book-eating rat.
It is also the story of a quest: recognition, freedom, communication and sharing. Behind the adventures of a gifted rat, you can see effortlessly a beautiful metaphor: “Firmin”, it’s a life filled with dreams and illusions. And, shutting the book, I’m sure you’ll remember this sentence “If you are alone, I think it can help you if you are a little bit crazy.”
Extract
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 likeTolstoy’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.
In all my life struggling to write I have struggled with nothing so manfully – yes, that’s the word, manfully – as with openers. It has always seemed to me that if I could just get that bit right all the rest would follow automatically. I thought of that first sentence as a kind of semantic womb stuffed with the busy embryos of unwritten pages, brilliant little nuggets of genius practically panting to be born. From that grand vessel the entire story would, so to speak, ooze forth. What a delusion! Exactly the opposite was true. And it is not as if there weren’t any good ones. Savor this, for example: ‘When the phone rang at 3:00 a.m. Morris Monk knew even before picking up the receiver that the call was from a dame, and he knew something else too: dames meant trouble.’ Or this: ‘Just before being hacked to pieces by Gamel’s sadistic soldiers, Colonel Benchley had a vision of the little whitewashed cottage in Shropshire, and Mrs Benchley in the doorway, and the children.’ Or this: ‘Paris, London, Djibouti, all seemed unreal to him now as he sat amid the ruins of yet another Thanksgiving dinner with his mother and father and that idiot Charles.’ Who can remain unimpressed by sentences like these? They are so pregnant
with meaning, so, I dare say, poignant with it that they positively bulge with whole unwritten chapters – unwritten, but there, already there!
Alas, in reality they were nothing but bubbles, illusions every one. Each of the wonderful phrases, so full of promise, was like a gift-wrapped box clutched in a small child’s eager hand, a box that holds nothing but gravel and bits of trash, though it rattles oh so enticingly. He thinks it is candy! I thought it was literature. All those sentences – and many, many others as well – proved to be not springboards to the great unwritten novel but insurmountable barriers to it. You
see, they were too good. I could never live up to them. Some writers can never equal their first novel. I could never equal my first sentence. And look at me now. Look how I have begun this, my final work, my opus: ‘I had always imagined that my life story, if and when . . .’ Good God, ‘if and when’! You see the problem. Hopeless. Scratch it.
(Extract from Sam Savage, « Firmin »)
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