Kockroach

by Tyler Knox

Book Overview

It is the mid-1950s, and Kockroach, perfectly content with his life infesting a fleabag hotel off Times Square, awakens to discover that somehow he's been transformed into, of all things, a human. A... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061143340
• ISBN13: 9780061143342
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 356 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Modern Day Kafka

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.

Damn near brilliant

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

A Great Set-Up! A cockroach becomes human to his disgust!

"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.

An intriguing and thought-provoking twist on Kafka's Metamorphosis

"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. Fina

Clever satire--and a fun read

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.