Rat Man of Paris

by Paul West

Traces the friendship of Sharli Bandol, a teacher, and Poulsifer, the Rat Man of Paris, a drifter who becomes obsessed with punishing Nazi war criminals

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literature, Historical Fiction

179 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Paul West (February 23, 1930) was an English-born novelist, literary historian and poet, the author of 24 novels, who lived in America since the early 1960s. He resided in upstate New York with his wife, the writer, poet and well-known naturalist Diane Ackerman, until his death in 2015. Paul, still remembered with affection by his old colleagues and friends in England as a big, jolly man, was born in Eckington, which is near (and now considered a part of) Sheffield in South Yorkshire, but was during West’s childhood a Derbyshire village associated with the famous literary Sitwells of Renishaw.
Paul was honoured with the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award (1985), the Lannan Prize for Fiction (1993), the Grand Prix Halperine-Kaminsky Award (1993), and three Pushcart Prizes (1987, 1991, 2003). He was also a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Literary Lion (1987), and a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters 1996, France).
His parents, Alfred and Mildred, really cared for books, and created an environment which ensured that young Paul inherited a great passion for literature, which was enhanced when he went from his native village to study first at Oxford University in England and later at Columbia University in America. He never lived in England again after going to Columbia, and in later years Paul was involved with other US universities in teaching roles, notably Pennsylvania State University.
Paul West’s novels have included: ‘A Quality of Mercy’ (1961); ‘Tenement of Clay’ (1965); ‘Alley Jaggers’ (1966); ‘I'm Expecting to Live Quite Soon’ (1970); ‘Bela Lugosi's White Christmas’ (1972); ‘The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg’ (1980); ‘Rat Man of Paris’ (1986); ‘The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper’ (1991); and ‘OK: The Corral, the Earps and Doc Holliday’ (2000).
His non-fiction has included the autobiographical ‘I, Said the Sparrow’, a delightful essay on his Eckington childhood; ‘The Growth of the Novel’ (1959), ‘The Modern Novel’ (in 2 vols, 1963); ‘Robert Penn Warren’ (1964); ‘Words for a Deaf Daughter’ (1969); ‘A Stroke of Genius: Illness and Self-discovery’ (1995); and the remarkable ‘The Shadow Factory’ (2008), the aphasic memoir he dictated with such struggle and resolve –it brings tears to the eyes and admiration to the heart, as we are reminded in reading it of the courage of this man. It is a ‘must-read’ in the context of the terrible stroke he suffered in 2003. Paul’s wife, Diane, also wrote about that stroke and its consequences in her book ‘One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage and the Language of Healing’. Paul’s poetry collections include ‘Poems’ (1952), ‘The Spellbound Horses’ (1960), and ‘The Snow Leopard’ (1964).


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Reviews

[J.C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that, after you've read it for a time, you love it more in retrospect than when you were actually reading it.
For me i had a hard time following it, so i had to take my time reading it piece by piece.
But really this book is very well done, it articulates the reality of the main character in its sentence structure and word choices perfectly. You feel like you're viewing the world through the eyes of Rat Man, though the book isn't first person.
I recommend the book to any and all English majors. Maybe psych students as well. Or anyone looking for something to really sink their teeth into.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

West writes with casual erudition, as in "Oh don't mind me just going about this here novel lacing it with brilliance from time to time, the usual, no biggie." Think of a Barthelme born of Gass. The story is silly, the prose is serious. There is allegory galore but not gauche. My first West, I will be heading for others.

[Griffin Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

All he knows is that anyone pursuing something becomes that something to some extent.

This for me really falls into my reading life with The Cannibal Galaxy and Garden, Ashes in that it is slippery and solemn and bizarre and moving, but ultimately hard to summarize exactly how it moves, its heart, or that very thing that makes it waft right off the page, that lets it linger in the folds of your clothes and the mess of your hair.

[Journee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 stars unless i come back to it later and wonder why i gave it that rating?

this book was so interesting and poetic. i dont know what to even say about it. in short, rat man of paris is about a disturbed man who survived an occupied france, but has to live with the death of his parents. he finds love and later has a child, but concerns himself with an ex-nazi of the same name (ratman) who is said to be sentenced to execution. the protagonist is literally famous for shoving rats in his coat and showing them to civilians on the street. this later escalates to foxes and later he walks around burning a newspaper photograph with just a magnifying glass and the sun while going through hell trying to please an audience of many and making it on TV to spread the word about his cause.

i think this is a beautiful story that captures the mind of a bum of a man who is being taken care of by his girlfriend who has to learn to deal with him rather than how to love him; i really loved their scenario because it reminded me a lot of my relationships where i feel like i have to form my life around them rather than a compromise between the two.
and the way paul west pictures rat man learning to live with his child as a father— who believes is too old to be fathering a baby— and the arc that rat man goes through to going from rat man, a celebrity, to poussif, a father and regular man feels so raw and real.

in the second part of the story he’s obsessed with murdering the nazi he found in a newspaper and it reminded me so much of v for vendetta because of the links to the holocaust and how passionate he is about getting justice for ultimately no one but himself, something youd never expect him to want.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

He will not wait for some official
To accord him freedom of the city;
He has it already.

Newborn, or reborn, he fondles
In himself
The small boy with a lust for blood.

[Elise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is at times beautifully written, and always dark, disturbing, and sad. It shows that some of the survivors of war could, and should, be counted among its casualties because of the irreparable damage done to their psyches. Rat Man is such a casualty--alive as a ghost, wandering the streets of Paris flashing his rats at the unsuspecting patrons of outdoor cafes. His mission is to wake people up, to keep the memories alive. Can the love of school teacher, Sharli, save him? Rat Man of Paris is certainly thought-provoking and beautiful in its ugliness, but maybe not the book I should have been reading during a trying time for me.

[Heather Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, this is an amazing novel. West has a diamond-shaped brain, I am convinced. This is an extraordinary exploration of, among other topics, floating signifiers, a featured concept in post-modern writing.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

A big disappointment.

[Robert Nagle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short elegant novel. Paul West's best I've encountered.