Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Tyler Knox's novel Kockroach is an energetic tour de force that will delight lovers of experimental fiction, Kafka aficionados and fans of all things noir. Remarkably, the author manages to make the reader see cockroaches with fresh eyes. In this book, it's the bug who pulsates with vitality, sex and ambition.
The premise is a variation on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. In this telling, a cockroach wakes up to discover he has turned into a man named Jerry Blatta.
Set in Manhattan's seedy Times Square around 1950, the insect-turned-human draws upon the traditional weapons of the indestructible cockroach -- a relentless appetite for food and sex, a willingness to eat anything, including members of one's own colony, as well as world-class sneakiness -- to become a powerful player in American society.
In his drive to the top of the dung heap, Blatta is assisted by a low-rent, height-challenged hood nicknamed Mite. (The novel brims with entertaining references to the insect world as well as Kafka's original story.) Mickey "Mite" Pimelia narrates his side of the story, and lovers of tough-guy slang and neo-Raymond Chandler/James Cain dialogue will relish Mite's voice.
Warring Mob bosses, betrayal, sexual triangles, prostitutes, pimps, bad cops and worse criminals: Knox mixes together all the usual suspects in a crime novel.
Except that within the chest of the swaggering alpha male Blatta beats the heart of a cockroach. Knox handles the noir stuff well. But the novel gets its originality, its humor and its kick from the way Knox applies Blatta's insect past to his human present.
In hindsight, Blatta recalls what cockroaches like to eat, how they fight to survive, the satisfactions of living literally on top of each other. Not to mention their kinky, non-stop sex lives. Nothing that Blatta enjoys with the strumpets of Manhattan can possibly compare.
Alas, as the novel progresses, Blatta becomes more human. Once impervious to feeling, he begins to experience regret, longing and satisfaction. But enough of him remains true to his insect self.
Watching this cockroach in a beautifully tailored double-breasted suit rise to power first as a gangster, then as a businessman, is like A Bug's Life version of the Tony Soprano story. Inventively hilarious.
Kockroach
By Tyler Knox
Morrow, 356 pp., $23.95
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
