Firmin (20 page)
Authors: Sam Savage
Tags: #Rats, #Fantasy Fiction, #Fiction, #Books and Reading, #Fantasy, #General
Author’s Note
Scollay Square was an actual place, its destruction an actual event.
Firmin
, however, is a work of fiction. I have sometimes distorted - or permitted Firmin to distort - events and geography for the sake of the story. For example, though Edward Logue, supervisor of the ‘renovation,’ was indeed a bombardier during the Second World War in Europe, he was not, as far as I know, nicknamed the Bombardier, nor I think did he include photographs of the ruins of Stuttgart and Dresden in his r’sum’s. And though the Millerites’ original tabernacle was in fact turned into a theater, that building burned to the ground in 1846; the Old Howard Theater that Firmin would have known was built to replace it. And while there really was a Rialto Theater and it was indeed known as the Scratch House, I don’t know that it showed pornographic movies after midnight. I am indebted to David Kruh’s
Always Something Doing: Boston’s Infamous Scollay Square
for much information about the history of the Square, though Mr Kruh is not of course responsible for any of the distortions or errors. Finally I would like to acknowledge a debt to the late George Gloss, owner of the Brattle Book Shop in old Scollay Square, who sold me for next to nothing volumes I still own today, who probably never possessed a safe full of banned literature, and who, faced with the destruction of his store, gave away all the books you could carry in five minutes.
Firmin
, however, is a work of fiction. I have sometimes distorted - or permitted Firmin to distort - events and geography for the sake of the story. For example, though Edward Logue, supervisor of the ‘renovation,’ was indeed a bombardier during the Second World War in Europe, he was not, as far as I know, nicknamed the Bombardier, nor I think did he include photographs of the ruins of Stuttgart and Dresden in his r’sum’s. And though the Millerites’ original tabernacle was in fact turned into a theater, that building burned to the ground in 1846; the Old Howard Theater that Firmin would have known was built to replace it. And while there really was a Rialto Theater and it was indeed known as the Scratch House, I don’t know that it showed pornographic movies after midnight. I am indebted to David Kruh’s
Always Something Doing: Boston’s Infamous Scollay Square
for much information about the history of the Square, though Mr Kruh is not of course responsible for any of the distortions or errors. Finally I would like to acknowledge a debt to the late George Gloss, owner of the Brattle Book Shop in old Scollay Square, who sold me for next to nothing volumes I still own today, who probably never possessed a safe full of banned literature, and who, faced with the destruction of his store, gave away all the books you could carry in five minutes.
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