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Still quite sleepy, I sat down in my armchair to enjoy my first coffee of the morning.
Through the haze of sleep, a void in my library suddenly caught my attention. Three volumes were missing, three jewels of world literature: the Complete Works of Shakespeare, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
My first thought was, “Firmin was in my library and ate my books”.
On my table lay Firmin, the novel by American writer Sam Savage (1940-2019), which I am rereading and enjoying for the third time.
Let me explain.
The story of Firmin takes place in Boston in the 1960s and is about a rat that devours books in the basement of a Boston bookstore. Firmin’s mother was an alcoholic rat, and for reasons of survival, Firmin learns to “read” to feed himself. In short, the novel has a humorous tone, and the worldview from a rat’s perspective is quite interesting.
But returning to my own library, I breathed a sigh of relief.
The missing books weren’t a delicacy for my rodent friend I remembered, but rather a gift for my young nephew, a man of great intellectual curiosity whose birthday is June 16th, Bloomsday. For that reason, I had promised him Joyce’s Ulysses, which lay undisturbed in my library (I never get past the third page). I completed the gift by adding some of my sleepy tomes of Shakespeare (Firmin quotes Macbeth when he says, “Life is a tale told by an idiot”) and Don Quixote, whom he blames for his fate for “having become so engrossed in reading… that he lost his mind.”
I’m sure that Juan, like Firmin, will consume them with gusto.
For now, I enjoyed my morning coffee while I continued rereading my novel. Firmin was digesting his meal after devouring Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
“Firmin has been a turning point in my life as a reader, one of those rare encounters with an unforgettable character.”
Rosa Montero
