Kockroach
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| Author | Tyler Knox (pen name of William Lashner) |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Speculative fiction |
| Publisher | William Morrow and Company/HarperCollins |
| Pages | 356 |
| ISBN | 0-06-114334-0 |
| OCLC | 70054389 |
Kockroach is a 2007 novel by William Lashner, written under the name "Tyler Knox".[1] It was published by William Morrow and Company/HarperCollins.[2] In 2008, an Italian translation, Lo strano caso dello scarafaggio che diventò uomo, was published by Newton Compton Editori,[3] and a Portuguese translation, Kockroach: A Metamorfose, was published by Paralelo 40°.[4]
Synopsis[edit]
Kockroach is a re-imagining of Franz Kafka's 1915 novella the Metamorphosis:[5][1][2][6] instead of having human Gregor Samsa wake up and find that he has been transformed into an enormous insect, Kockroach begins with a cockroach waking up in a hotel room in New York City in the mid-1950s, and finding that he has been transformed into a human. Since cockroaches are "awesome coping machines" which do not possess significant capacity for angst, despair, or introspection, "Jerry Blatta" (as he becomes known) quickly learns to walk on two legs instead of six, to recognize himself in a mirror, to dress and feed himself, to ward off predators by constantly showing his teeth, to play chess, and, Chauncey Gardiner-like,[2] to fake his way through conversations. From there, he becomes a mob enforcer, then a mob boss, before venturing into politics.
Reception[edit]
Mark Lindquist described Kockroach as "Damon Runyon meets Kafka,"[7] while the San Francisco Chronicle compared it to Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.[8] USA Today found the novel to be "inventively hilarious", and compared the voice of Blatta's companion Mickey "Mite" Pimelia to the dialogue of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, but faulted it for having Blatta gradually become more human in personality.[5]
Kit Reed praised Lashner (as Knox)'s portrayal of the transformed cockroach, but criticized him for having anachronisms in the setting, saying that "(p)eriod details tend to slide around as though the author has done his homework, just not quite enough of it."[9] The New York Times similarly observed the presence of anachronisms, and found that Mite's voice "sounds more like Bugs Bunny than Bugsy Siegel", assessing that the story "feels like the basis for a fine B movie rather than a novel".[2]
Potential sequel[edit]
Lashner has said that if he were to write a sequel, it would be modeled on Robert Caro's Master of the Senate.[6]
References[edit]
- ^ a b A Bug's Life, by Ron Charles, in the Washington Post; published January 7, 2007; retrieved March 10, 2015
- ^ a b c d Debugged, by Matt Weiland, in the New York Times; published December 31, 2006; retrieved March 10, 2015
- ^ Lo strano caso dello scarafaggio che diventò uomo : romanzo, at WorldCat; retrieved March 10, 2015
- ^ Kockroach : a metamorfose / Tyler Knox; trad. Luís Coimbra; rev. Margarida Ferra at the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal; retrieved March 10, 2015
- ^ a b 'Kockroach' flips the Kafkaesque nightmare into hilarity, by Deirdre Donahue, in USA Today; published January 3, 2007; retrieved March 10, 2015
- ^ a b William Lashner’s Metamorphosis, by Rob Hart, at ChuckPalahniuk.net; published March 1, 2010; retrieved March 10, 2015; via Archive.org
- ^ KOCKROACH, by Tyler Knox (reviewed by Mark Lundquist), originally published in the Seattle Times, January 5, 2007; archived at MarkLindquist.net; retrieved March 10, 2015
- ^ Intriguing first novel reverses premise of Kafka's 'Metamorphosis,' turning a cockroach into a man, by Mark S. Luce, in the San Francisco Chronicle; published January 6, 2007; retrieved March 10, 2015
- ^ Kafkaesque `Kockroach' Is Nuttily Charming, by Kit Reed, in the Hartford Courant; published January 21, 2007; retrieved March 10, 2015