From the Booth

	Firmin by SAM SAVAGE
	v.
	The Road by CORMAC McCARTHY

commentary by KEVIN GUILFOILE & JOHN WARNER

GUILFOILE: More carnage in the Book Blogger Office Pool as a surprising number of participants (two thirds!) picked Firmin to defeat pre-tourney favorite The Road. I’m not sure why that is except that maybe Firmin, which was a pick of the Litblog Co-op is something like the blogger hometown team. (Hint, if you’re ever in my family’s NCAA pool, always pick against Notre Dame. You and my wife will be the only ones).

Also few people could have predicted Mark Sarvas’s hostility toward animal protagonists. Has he no fondness at all for Jack London? Did Mark have an uncle who used to beat him with a copy of Black Beauty or something?

WARNER: I too am surprised by Sarvas’s hostility. After all, his dismissal of the animal protagonist invalidates everything from Watership Down (rabbits) to Old Yeller (rabid dog) to Catcher in the Rye (rabid teenager).

When one looks at the great animal protagonists of literature, one often looks to Ralph, of children’s classic The Mouse and the Motorcycle. In the book by Beverly Cleary, Ralph finds that he can make a toy motorcycle go by simply making a motorcycle noise with his mouth. I tried this recently when the fuel line on my car came detached. I sat in my driveway, gripping the wheel and going, “vroom vroom,” but gas continued to pour to the ground, making me increasingly lightheaded. Perhaps the problem is that I have a Prius and should have been doing something less combustion-energyish.

Frankly, I find Sarvas’s hostility to animal protagonists weird. I hope he never has kids because the anthropomorphized animated animal flick is basically the go-to for parents of all stripes. If he ever finds himself in a Khalid Sheikh Mohammed-style detention situation, his captors will have him spilling the beans after a couple of showings of The Lion King or Finding Nemo.

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