Customer Reviews

Kockroach: A Novel

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"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." You probably recognize this as the opening line to Franz Kafka's classic novella "The Metamorphosis." Of course you do --- pretty much everyone knows (or at least knows of) the story of Gregor Samsa's unfortunate transformation into a cockroach. Apparently, Tyler Knox also knows Kafka's tale well --- well enough to start his debut novel, KOCKROACH, with the following sentence: "As Kockroach, an arthropod of the genus Blatella and of the species germanica, awakens one morning from a typically dreamless sleep, he finds himself transformed into some large, vile creature."

What kind of "large, vile creature," you may ask, could a cockroach possibly turn into? Why, a human of course. Kockroach, assuming he's undergone some horrific kind of molting, soon sets about exploring the peculiarities of his new human body and his new environment. From the seedy hotel room where he awakens, Kockroach ventures out into the almost painful brightness of Times Square. This Times Square is not the tourist playground of today --- this is the 1950s, when it was a haven for gamblers, gangsters, prostitutes, drug dealers and the small-time hustlers who served them all.

One of these con men is a petty criminal named Mite. When Mite and Kockroach have a chance meeting, neither one of their lives will ever be the same. Mite gives Kockroach a human name (Jerry Blatta) and soon enlists him on an errand --- retrieving some money from a deadbeat. When Kockroach proves more than adept at playing the heavy (he breaks the offender's arm without hesitation), Mite quickly attaches himself to Kockroach as the mysterious newcomer rises to the top of the Times Square crime scene. But the pair's uneasy partnership is as driven by competition as it is by loyalty, and soon their mutual acts of betrayal may blow everything up in their faces.

As Mite recognizes, Kockroach, with his utter amorality and his recognition of only two emotional states --- fear and greed --- proves startlingly adept at obtaining, and wielding, power. While still maintaining (sometimes in particularly gruesome and graphic fashion) certain cockroach attributes, Kockroach quickly and brutally rises through the ranks of organized crime, business, and finally (no surprise here) politics, all without moral qualms or even passing regrets. As Kockroach ascends to power, Knox poses some intriguing questions about what kind of person --- or insect?- --- it takes to be successful in America, all couched within a noir motif that's worthy of James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler.

Kockroach's story is told by three different narrators. First, there's Kockroach himself, whose combination of naivete and clear disdain for the human species makes him an oddly appealing antihero. Then there's Mite, the insecure opportunist who teaches Kockroach to see past the present and whose narration is riddled with slang. Finally, there's Celia, the polio-crippled beauty whom both men love, at least as much as either one is capable of experiencing that emotion. Together, the three construct a narrative that goes far beyond pastiche and marks Tyler Knox as a first-time novelist to watch.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl.

There was a book some years ago called Shoebag by Mary James. It is a children's book. A cockroach turns inro a little boy named Shoebag because cockroaches are named after their place of birth and he is born in a shoebag. He has a friend named Gregor Samsa, the hero of Kafka's Metamorphosis. I think this book is still in print. Kockroach is well told. I think both books are interesting takes on the idea.

"Deal with it, that is the cockroach way. When food is scarce, cockroaches don't complain, first they eat their dead, then they eat their young, then they eat each other." "He will adapt, he is a cockroach." The author does indeed pull off the transformation of insect into man, and does it humorously- "Mite rubs a shiny white stone all over his body, creating a weird white froth. Other humans do the same thing, Kockroach takes the same white stone. It is slippery, easily bruised like no stone he has ever touched befor. He licks it and spits out the bitter taste." and with purpose,"Whenever a cocroach sits back and wonders what it's all about, he gets stepped on." This is a morality tale done in a style I find myself cheering on, "Similary Kockroach fails to understand the way some humans are angry at other humans simply because of the sound of their last names, the shape of their eyes, the color of their skins. To him they are all of the lower orders, all humans, and to differentiate among them because of color or accent or the vowels in their last names is to differentiate among defferent orders of feces, all tasty, sure, but still." Or the sexual innuendos, as when killing cockroaches,"..but when those little buggers they're back that night it's hell to pay. You want to kill'em, you got to think like 'em. Not just any crack will do. They like it warm, they like it tight, they like it moist." "Don't we all" replies Kockroach. Or when Kockroach starts thinking, "This thinking, he thinks, is like a sicknes, only you can't sqeeze it out with your morning crap.". Or in describing business, "The world of business is a close to a perfect spot as a cockroach could ever hope to find.". Or money, "Money, he has learned, draws women like flies to feces.". Or, "And what I learned was this: People, theys all liars, and the ones they lying to most of all is theyselves.". And finially, "Senators are cheaper to buy than buildings. Better to sit on a toilet seat than in the Senate.". A great read with humor and purpose.

Okay so Tyler Knox flipped the Kafka storyline around, he still did a good job. This is a funny satrical look at all of us. It is well written and plotted but the ending is left so open that you wish there was more left.
Set in '50's New York this book tells the story of a cockroach that wakes up underneath a bed in a flop house as a human. What he does from there is second nature to all cockroaches he survives and thrives at first in organized crime, then to buisness and politics. There is alot to like about this book and not much to detract from it, i recommend it to anyone interested in the human struggle.

Kockroach as many others have pointed out and so does the first paragraph on the book jacket is an excellent twist on Franz Kafka's tale The Metamorphosis. Like another reviewer has also noted it is not a unique idea and has done before with the junior fiction novel Shoebag (Apple Paperbacks) by Mary James. Her novel however was nowhere near as violent or heavy reading as what Tyler Knox has done with Kockroach. Hers was a good book though if you liked the plot of this novel you should read it too.

A cockroach wakes up one morning in the 1950's in the room of a run down New York motel to find to its disgust that it has become a weird creature whose body does not have the great adaptations as it did before. The first part of the book where Kockroach is exploring the world of humans and discovering through interactions with the lesser species all about his new body and life is an hilarious surreal look into our human world. The second part reads like a pulp fiction adventure from yesteryear as Kockroach sets out to become the most powerful figure in the New York mafia world. The story jumped a little bit too quickly to this second storyline for me to rate it five stars. One chapter Kockroach is confused and learning about his new environment and in the next he can speak in conversations and understand most of what those around him are saying. The novel in its entirety is still very good I just would have preferred the first part of the story to continue a bit longer. The reader as they turn the pages also will learn a great deal that they never knew before about their thousands of probably unwelcome housemate the cockroaches.

Highly recommended! By the way if you liked the novel Kockroach by Knox but can't find anything else under his name. That's because he decided to use a pseudonym with this novel that differs a bit from his usual crime ones. His real name is William Lashner and he's got a few books under his real name.

Kockroach

On one level, this is an obvious, and very funny
play off of Kafka's Metamorphosis. Instead of a
guy waking up and finding out that he's turned
into a roach, a roach wakes up and finds that
he's become a guy. It's a perfect set-up for a
gag: what kind of a guy does a roach turn into?
Your cousin Louie? Dick Cheyney? Michael Moore?

It should be no surprise that he goes first in to
organized crime, then legitimate business, then politics.
Readers will no doubt assign various contemporary
political figures to the roles laid out in the book-
that's part of the fun, but by no means the whole story.

It would have been tempting for the author-who may
or may not be named `Tyler Knox'-to play this story
strictly for laughs. But Knox is better than that.
What he does is create a combination of the pure
naturalism of John McFee, the noirish vision of
Raymond Chandler and the wiseacre perspective of
Damon Runyon.

Does that sound like a set-up for a parody? It's not.
Instead, it's a book that is so seductive that you'll
find yourself reading it long after your eyes have
started to droop. It's a book whose narrator-the Kockroach's
mite- will stay with you for days after
the read is done.

For fans of complex fiction, this is a gem. The
narrator is a subordinate character who's more
interesting that the `roach of the title. But his
fascination stems from his relationship to the
roach-turned-man. His negotiations of the terms
of that relationship and his unreliable narration
are what gives this book its exceptional power.

Unlike most fiction that relies on a device like
Kockroach's, this novel stayed with me for a long
time. Brilliant might be too big a word for this,
but not by much.

Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG, ISBN
9781601640005

It's a fun, satirical story, very well written but also fast paced and plot driven. The writing reminds me of David Foster Wallace (fun, witty, precise and original) and the plot reminds me of BEING THERE by Jerzy Kosinski--with an evil cockroach playing Chance Gardiner.

Set in Nixon-era New York, the book opens with Kockroach discovering that his most recent molt has had extraordinary results--he shed his cockroach body and became a human. He is a blank slate but learns quickly. He manages to leave the Times Square hotel room within a few days and discovers a world of rotting food waiting for him. He meets Mite, a small statured, small-time gangster who recognizes something special: "...he was either a total nut job or maybe the coolest, hippest guy on the Square, dropping on me a boatload of jazz man jive..."

With Mite's help, Kockroach becomes a big man in the Greek mob. And from there, his cut-throat cockroach brain serves him well in a social climb that leads, inevitably it seems, to politics.

I think this works as straightforward satire, as well as being a very entertaining story. It's a terrific debut and I hope we'll hear from Tyler Knox again soon.

In KOCKROACH, Tyler Knox skillfully combines gangster and noir detective genres along with an inverted take on Kafka's METAMORPHOSIS. In so doing, he creates an often inspired comic novel that examines such enduring philosophical questions as what makes a man a man, a roach a roach, men roach-like, and roaches like men.

After Kockroach's transformation from cockroach to man (which author Knox, following Kafka's lead, never explains), our "hero" is enticed away from his life of dumpster diving by Mighty Mite, a small time hustler (a human, not an insect), who is called Mite for short. With Kockroach as armbreaker (he possesses inhuman strength) and Mite's brains, the pair quickly rise to positions of power in the gang that runs New York's Times Square. Kockroach quickly learn the ropes, and after a setback or two, rises to become a successful businessman, and eventually a United States Senator.

Kockroach's spectacular rise is founded on his dual cockroach drives: his greed and his finely attuned sense of danger, or fear. He comes to learn that these drives are shared by humans as well, and that humans are easily manipulated through these drives. He also comes to understand that human behavior is sometimes based on sentimental ideas connected with loyalty, morality and social standing. As his understanding of human behavior becomes more sophisticated, Kockroach comes to see that blackmail is a more effective means of reaching his ultimate goal: to possess and control not just Times Square, or New York City, but the entire world

Kockroach is thus the perfect embodiment of the neo-liberal economist's reductive model of mankind -- "homo economicus" - that creature, who, through his own greed and fear, creates opportunity and wealth for society at large. Mr. Knox's book is not explicitly political as might be taken from my last sentence, however, such a reading is hard to avoid. As such, the book is a very funny counterargument to the kind of free-market cant that we are treated to so stridently here in the US.

Kockroach is betrayed by humans who are unable to persist in inhuman behavior. Mite, for instance, turns out to be driven by jealousy and love. Mite falls in love with a telephone operator, Celia, and dreams of a life in Yonkers in a white house behind a white picket fence. Then when he discovers Kockroach has been seeing Celia behind his back, he, in a jealous rage, betrays Kockroach to a corrupt police detective. To set the trap, Mite manipulates the one idealistic dream the detective harbors to clean up the criminal element in Times Square. Most importantly, there's Champ, a former prizefighter and Mite's lover, who leaves Mite when he learns that Mite, under orders from Kockroach, has gathered information to blackmail the homosexual son of a competitor.

Champ, Mite's African-American lover, I would argue is a key character in KOCKROACH. In a work as consciously literary as KOCKROACH, Champ must be seen as Mite's "Jim." Early on in the book, (page 26) we are told by Mite that he spent a lot of time as a boy in the local library reading "through the fiction section...floating on that raft with Huck and Jim..." When Champ objects to Mite blackmailing Kockroach's competitor with the son's homosexuality, he does so because "...what those fools did [others Mite has blackmailed] is different than what they are." Like Twain's Jim who understands that he is judged inferior by society simply for the color of his skin, Champ understands that the homosexual son, along with himself and Mite, are judged inferior and degenerate for their sexual orientation."

Kockroach, (or Jerry Blatta as he eventually comes to be known), has no understanding of the hatred men have for one another based on race, creed or country. His indifference arises from his drive for absolute power, i.e., it matters not at all whom he has to step on to get what he wants. He sees others purely as means, not as ends. (Kant would definitely have a problem with Jerry Blatta.)

When I saw on the back flap that the author is a graduate of that workshop for writers in Iowa, I assumed KOCKROACH would offer up a good dose of flashy literary cleverness. I was not disappointed in this. But there's fire here, too, and some heat as well, two elements sometimes missing in those who matriculate from that academy. The difference here is that the cleverness is in service to some interesting philosophical questions, and so is not as distracting as with authors like T. C. Boyle. While the style is sometimes a bit uneven, especially the sections where Mighty Mite holds forth in a combination of Runyonesque palaver and fancy five syllable words, Mr. Knox, overall, keeps the reader engaged with the ideas and questions that grow out of Kockroach's very literary transformation.

This book is awesome. I would have preferred the exclusion of the main female character, but she still has her purpose. The highlight of the book is the ingenious use of the Kockroach character. So many incidental jokes based on people saying typical things, but having them be perceived as something much different. There was a chapter all about Kockroach getting back to his roachy roots, and while reading it, I suddenly felt very okay about the idea of an apocalypse, and anything that can do that is alright in my book.

This highly creative and ambitious novel flips Kafka's famous "Metamorphosis" on its head with the bizarre lead character Jerry Blatta, who has mysteriously morphed from a roach into a human. He stumbles confused into the seedy 1950s version of Times Square and hooks up with a diminutive gangster patsy named Mite. (In the insect world roaches and mites have the same type of relationship.) With the mind of a roach, and a roach's lack of morals and thirst for survival, Jerry naturally achieves success first in organized crime, then business, then politics - all while failing to truly figure out the incomprehensibility of human nature.

This novel mixes dark humor and subversive social commentary in ways that are nearly brilliant, complete with colorful characters and good use of period slang. The book is quite enjoyable overall and you'll surely be transfixed until the end. But watch out for the inconsistent mood, with the initial dark and sarcastic humor giving way to unwieldy existentialism as the story rumbles along. There are also many missed opportunities to delve into the unique Celia character (not to mention Jerry himself), and this reader disagrees with the author's decision to keep an important mystery unresolved and up in the air. But the novel is still a real winner overall, and Tyler Knox surely has potential for subversive comedy-drama. He's already hit the jackpot here with his (un-)shocking insights into the inner roachness of American power players. [~doomsdayer520~]