Wisconsin State Journal from Madison, Wisconsin • 2

A2 SUNDAY. JANUARY 24. 2010 PAGE TWO WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL Madison author a hit in Europe m. (hen Sam Savage decided to sail solo around the world a decade or so ago, the darkly comic voice of a rodent who is also not ducking into the neighborhood CIVIC LIFE Leftist schmeftist Dont tell Rush Limbaugh, but in some quarters Presi-ff dent Obama isnt exactly giving Che Guevara a run for his money. A year into the Obama presidency, a collection of left-leaning groups is asking whether theres any shall we say hope that the change we can believe in" will become more than a notable entry in the pantheon of political slogans.

The Left and Obama: What Happened to Change? will feature speakers including Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, and Will Williams of Veterans for Peace. It begins Saturday at 7 p.m. in Room 2650 of the UW-Madison Humanities Building, 455 N. Park St. Organizers are asking for an admission of fee of between $5 and $20, but say no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

REAL LIFE Know your medicine Seniors with questions about their prescription medications can get free, one-on-one consulta-1 tions with a UW Health pharmacist Tuesday at the NorthEastside Senior Coalition offices in Madison. Learn how to optimize medications intended effects and minimize their side effects, as well as why you are taking them. The event begins at 10:30 a.m. at 1625 Northport Drive, 125. To make an appointment, call 608-243-5252.

Bring all your medications or a list of what they and their dos- ages to the consultation. EASY LIFE Shall we dance? Organizers of a free, introductory class Thursday on danceAnovement therapy will explain how a body in motion can leave a mind at peace. The Power of Movement runs from p.m. in the community room at the Willy Street Co-op, 1221 Williamson Madison, and will be taught by instructors from the Madison-based Hancock Centes. Registration is required; stop in or call (608) 251-0884.

No word on whether participants will get to do the electric slide. he stopped writing, not that a lot of people noticed. Savage was 60 and hadnt published much. Savage bought a boat. The solo voyage, he thought, would be the novel he couldnt seem to write.

Then a couple of things happened. Savages health he suffers from an inherited form of emphysema sank the planned sailing adventure. And Savage and his wife, Nora, moved from South Carolina to Madison. They have a disabled daughter and came here in part, he said, for the good mass transit. They had hung onto their house in the woods 40 miles north of Charleston, and the first two winters, Sam went back there.

He wanted to check on the house and give the cold and snow a miss. The second winter, it got interesting. Perhaps inspired by his isolation, Savage started writing again. He heard a voice and started typing. It went well.

He liked the voice. The pages piled up. By the time the winter of 2003 was over, Savage had a novel. There was one thing, however. The voice his narrator was a rat.

Its name was Firmin and it was bom in the basement of a shabby bookstore in Bostons Scollay Square neighborhood. I thought, Whos going to read this? Savage was saying Thursday morning. He was sitting in the living room of his home on Madisons East Side. book-loving above pom theater. That neighborhood Scollay Square was one Savage knew from having lived in Boston in his late teens.

He grew up in Camden, S.C., where his dad was mayor. In Boston, he read the Beats. Soon he enrolled at Yale, then dropped out of went to Europe, came back from Europe, and eventually got a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale. He worked as a bicycle mechanic, wrote in fits and starts, and eventually, with Nora, returned to the South.

They built a home in McClel-lanville, S.C., and Savage worked as a commercial fisherman. When his sailing dream evaporated, they moved to Madison. It was here Savage wrote his second novel, recently published, titled The Cry of the Sloth. Its told mainly through letters written by the frustrated editor of an obscure literary journal who is also an aspiring novelist and inattentive landlord. The letters are funny, mean, desperate and sad by turn.

Savage writes every day, seated in his living room in a big easy chair he bought recently. I was as excited when I got that chair as when I got my sailboat, Savage said. Thats a sign of old age and decrepitude. He likes Madison but misses the ocean. Sometimes he and Nora walk their neighborhood, but he doesnt get out much.

Mostly he writes. Savage said he expected to finish a draft of his third novel the narrator is a lonely old woman this weekend. You have to like its chances in Europe. The womans neighbor has a pet rat. Corftact Doug Moe at 608-252-6446 or WILLIAM BALDWIN Madison author Sam Savage had a surprise best-seller with his npvel about a book loving rat.

As if to answer that question, Savage stood and walked to a nearby book case. He began lifting books from the shelves. The thing was, it was all the same book Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Low-life in many different languages. This is the Polish edition, Savage said, passing a volume to a visitor. Published in 2006, when its first-time author was 66, Firmin became a surprise best-seller.

Not in the United States, but across Europe. The London Telegraph sent a reporter to Madison to interview the So did a German television network. I may be the most famous obscure American author in Europe, Savage said. Firmin sold 300,000 copies in Italy and remains on the best-seller lists in Spain. It was a big hit in France, as well.

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