Firmin
Autobiographie d'un grignoteur de livres
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Boston, années 1960, dans les caves d'une librairie d'occasion au bord de la faillite. Firmin, rat des villes, nourri (au sens propre comme au sens figuré) de Grande Littérature, se rêve en James Joyce ou au moins en Fred Astaire. Mais ses fantasmes de passion hollywoodienne, d'amitié virile et de gloire littéraire doivent affronter la dure réalité des tractopelles dans un quartier (et une époque) en pleine "réhabilitation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Savage's sentimental debut concerns the coming-of-age of a well-read rat in 1960s Boston. In the basement of Pembroke Books, a bookstore on Scollay Square, Firmin is the runt of the litter born to Mama Flo, who makes confetti of Moby-Dick and Don Quixote for her offspring's cradle. Soon left to fend for himself, Firmin finds that books are his only friends, and he becomes a hopeless romantic, devouring Great Books sometimes literally. Aware from his frightful reflection that he is no Fred Astaire (his hero), he watches nebbishy bookstore owner Norman Shine from afar and imagines his love is returned until Norman tries to poison him. Thereafter he becomes the pet of a solitary sci-fi writer, Jerry Magoon, a smart slob and drinker who teaches Firmin about jazz, moviegoing and the writer's life. Alas, their world is threatened by extinction with the renovation of Scollay Square, which forces the closing of the bookstore and Firmin's beloved Rialto Theater. With this alternately whimsical and earnest paean to the joys of literature, Savage embodies writerly self-doubts and yearning in a precocious rat: "I have had a hard time facing up to the blank stupidity of an ordinary, unstoried life."
