FIRMIN by Sam Savage
Have you ever been at a bar or a party, stuck talking to some dude who's clearly a depressed wreck, visibly down on his luck, but who wants to tell you his life story anyway? You know how it's going to end... he keeps referring to things like, "But that was before I lost my job and the house." He's drunk and his breath doesn't smell so good and he's somewhat interesting and you feel bad for him, but ultimately you'd rather be talking to your buddy Jane about her work for Doctors Without Borders, or your cousin Ed about the novel he just sold.
I almost didn't finish Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, and you may be able to discern why: for me, the experience of reading it was very much like being buttonholed by that poor schmo who just needs someone, anyone, to listen to him for a few hours. This is something that maybe you'd do when the schmo is a person in need, but when the schmo is a rat narrating a short novel, you may find yourself wanting to back... away... slowly.
But it's only 150pp, and I found myself continually just curious enough to keep on reading. Is a rat's life destined to be anything more than a sad-sack story?
Firmin is born in the basement of a bookstore in Boston's Scollay Square in the late 1950s or early 1960s. He's the runt of a large litter, and only survives by filling his half-empty stomach with paper from the books around him. Somehow, he develops the ability to read, and soon reads his way through the store. Scollay Square is a seedy flop-house area full of peep shows and other adult entertainment, Firmin's source of food and non-literary entertainment. Eventually, it's slated for demolition. Before everything he knows changes, Firmin will leave the bookstore to live elsewhere in the building with an alcoholic bohemian science fiction writer who becomes the only true friend he ever has. Even so, as Firmin repeatedly warns the reader, the story doesn't have a happy ending. Lowlife is the watchword.
Sam Savage is in his mid-60s, but this is his first published novel. The relatively unique subject matter and the finesse with which Savage writes got this book a lot of attention on last year's lists. But it seems like everyone talking about the book overplays the titular rat's literary nature... he makes a handful of literary references, it's true, but is just as likely to imagine himself into one of the several dozen movies he's seen. It's well-written, but the much-vaunted wittiness never goes past "mordant" or "wistful." I can't say it's bad at all - it's one of those books that might wind up being assigned to high school and college students when they're studying voice and character, in a novel. But I can say that I didn't really "enjoy" reading it... it's neither light nor intellectually challenging. It's a novel that's "serious" by virtue of the utter lack of triumphs in the lives of its characters. And Firmin is only a likable character in spite of the hard work he does to make himself sound unlikable... readers will like him, if they like him, not because he's a philosophically-inclined literary rat, but because he is, ironically enough, infused with humanity.
My favorite passage, from p57, discusses the specifics of the projected destruction of Scollay Square:
Destroying that much of the city was going to be a big job. The buildings were old and had deep roots and did not want to go. So the mayor and the city council went looking for the right man, someone who understood the difficulties of applying heavy machinery to very old buildings and narrow streets, and they found Edward Logue. He was nicknamed the Bombardier, because that was what he had been during World War II. In a B-24. So he had had firsthand experience with the largest urban renewal project in human history. He sent the mayor and city council pictures of Stuttgart and Dresden and told them, "I can make Scollay Square look like that."
He got the job.
See? Mordant wit.
I disliked Michael Mikolowski's pen-and-ink-wash illustrations, which seem influenced by Gahan Wilson. They are sometimes difficult to make out at the size at which they're printed, and to me, do not seem to jibe exactly with the mood of the story. (If a major point of the story is that Firmin is a real rat with an extensive interior life, not one that is cartoon-cute or cartoon-repulsive, why accompany it with exaggeratedly grotesque illustrations that seem like they could be Fritz the Cat outtakes? They make Firmin seem like a drunken lecher, when in reality he's bookish and his carnal appetites are dreamy and idealized, almost sublimated.)
So I have to throw my hands up in the air and say that this is the sort of thing that you will like if you like this sort of thing. It's too much of a downer for me, and while I think the character of Jerry Magoon, the writer, is well and affectionately drawn, I found Firmin otherwise pretty monotonous. The writing is, on a textual level, certainly better than 99% of first novels. Thus, if you don't mind depressing books, and anything I've said about this one appeals to you, you may enjoy it. I think I would have appreciated it more when I was in my "sad books are more truthful about the human condition!" phase, but at this point, I think I need a viewing of Flushed Away to cleanse my palate. ;)
