Firmin v. Brookland
presented by
ROUND ONE
Firmin
v. Brookland
Judged by Sarah Hepola
TMN Contributing Writer Sarah Hepola is hoping to visit Italy soon. She eats a lot of sushi, and she always saves the salmon piece for last. She is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Nerve, Slate, and on NPR’s “Day to Day.” She lives in Brooklyn with a big orange cat who’s not fat, he’s just big-boned. Connections to authors: None.
Brookland is one of those elegant historical novels unembroidered by the ironic flourishes so common to today’s prose. And holy crap, it is so boring. First of all, it is 500 pages. There are books that long I’d happily read, but they don’t go by this description: An 18th-century distiller wants to build a bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Or as I like to call it: An 18th-centuryzzzzzz… What I can say about Brookland is that there are moving little moments—a slippery walk across the frozen East River one winter morning is one—but mostly, Brookland moved me to sleep. Apparently not everyone feels this way. Thomas Pynchon called novelist Emily Barton “blessedly post-ironic, engaging, and heartfelt.” That’s a stellar blurb, but then again, I haven’t been able to get into his books, either.
Firmin, meanwhile, is completely embroidered by the aforementioned ironic flourishes. The first sentence is about how the narrator can’t think of a good first sentence. How annoying is that? But I soon became absorbed in the adventures of the little rat who sustains himself by consuming (literally, figuratively) the tomes in a musty Boston bookstore. Firmin isn’t about what it feels like to be vermin—cold, smelly, one assumes—but it is about the tragedy of being unable to communicate, and the way literature can comfort even the loneliest beast. It’s also quite funny, and studded with endearingly familiar writers’ insecurities (like the inability to write a first sentence, for instance. And on a related note I was charmed by Sam Savage’s author’s photo, in which this first-time novelist is a dead ringer for Father Time.) Firmin isn’t the weightiest of books—a breezy 148 pages!—but I plowed through it, and was thoroughly charmed the entire way. Really, it couldn’t be more different than Brookland—one has heft while the other brevity; one has an expansive scope while the other one is itty-bitty; one is a historic romance while the other a comic fantasy. But if we must compare them, then my choice is clear. Rats!
Advancing:
Firmin
Match Commentary
with Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner
WARNER: For me this is the sleeper match-up of round one, with neither author being a household name. Honestly, though, none of the authors in this tournament are a “household name,” in the same way that Britney Spears or Carson Kressley or Jared from the Subway ads are household names. After one 90-second performance on American Idol, Antonella Barba had a higher Q rating than just about any living writer.
Ironically enough, probably the biggest name in this year’s tournament, Thomas Pynchon, is a recluse who emerges from seclusion just long enough to release doorstop novels and blurbs for (according to Judge Hepola) sleep-inducing historical fiction.
GUILFOILE: In another forum you and I once discussed the pitiful state of literary celebrity, and I think I said at the time that if celebrity is currency in America, then literary celebrity surely has the lowest street value. In fact, the producers of Dancing With the Stars recently made it clear that when it comes to choosing participants for a nationally televised dance competition, it is more important that the contestants not be writers than it is for them to still have both their legs. I predict that when they introduce Heather Mills on that show they will not mention the occupations that actually made her semi-famous—sex-manual model and ex-Beatlewife. They will instead say something like, “Heather has never written a novel and is generally opposed to seal hunting.”
WARNER: Firmin sounds fun. Not as much fun as watching Billy Ray Cyrus achy-break his Achilles tendon when he suffers a massive tear on the Dancing with the Stars tribute to Flashdance night, collapsing in a heap during his interpretation of Michael Sembello’s “Maniac” (leg warmers and all).
However, given its status as a Literary Blog Collective of Collectivists pick, early in the tournament Firmin has the look of this year’s Home Land, albeit with fewer ballsack jokes.
GUILFOILE: Oh man. Home Land had so many references to the ballsack that it should have been nominated for a Newberry Medal.