| Samuel Phillips Savage | |
|---|---|
| Born | 9 November 1940 Camden, South Carolina |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Spouse(s) | Nora Manheim |
Sam Savage (born November 9, 1940) is an American novelist and poet, best known for his 2006 novel Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife. Other published works are The Cry of the Sloth and The Criminal Life of Effie O.
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Sam (Samuel P.) Savage was born in 1940 in Camden, South Carolina. His father, Henry Savage Jr., a lawyer by profession, was also an author, publishing several books of history and natural history.
Savage graduated from Yale University in 1968. He subsequently studied philosophy at Yale and at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, receiving a Phd from Yale University with a dissertation on the political thought of Thomas Hobbes. He also taught at Yale, in his words "briefly and unhappily."
Prior to attending Yale he was poetry editor of Reflections, a small literary magazine published in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the early 1960s and was active in the Civil Rights Movement. After leaving Yale Savage spent several years in France. He returned to South Carolina in 1980, settling in the small coastal village of McClellanville. In 2004 he moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he now lives. Before writing, he worked as a bicycle mechanic, carpenter, crab fisherman, and letterpress printer.[1]
He is married to Nora Manheim, daughter of the noted literary translator Ralph Manheim. They have two children. Savage also has a son by a previous marriage.
Savage is the author of three novels. The first was a novel in verse, The Criminal Life of Effie O., published in 2005 and described as a “children’s book for adults.” It is illustrated by Virginia Beverley (Savage). In 2006 Coffee House Press published Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, a darkly humorous story about a bookstore rat in difficult times. In 2007 the Spanish publishing house Seix Barral purchased the world rights to Firmin, including English-language rights. The novel subsequently became a bestseller in Europe[2] and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. The Cry of the Sloth, published in 2009, is a tragic-comic novel that recounts the downhill slide of a failed literary man. The novel is composed of every word the protagonist writes over a period of four months, including letters, novel drafts, newspaper advertisements, and grocery lists.
Sam Savage was finalist for 2007 Awards for books published in 2006 from the Society of Midland Authors,[3] a 2006 Litblog Co-op Read This choice[4] as well as a Barnes & Noble Great New Writers pick.[5]