Firmin

*Firmin* is an autobiography of a rat born, "with my eyes wide open", as the 13th child to an alcoholic mother rat with 12 nipples in the basement of a Boston bookshop in Scollay Square on November 9, 1960. As a result, Firmin the runt puts off the pangs of hunger by consuming *Finnegans Wake,* his initial bedding, and acquires the ability to read and think symbolically.