Kockroach (Broché)

Kockroach, as Knox refers to his hero, is one of the oddest innocents ever to creep through American literature, but his coping follows the usual course: helping us see the strangeness of ordinary life by looking at it with fresh eyes (though now he's limited to two lenses, instead of 4,000). "There is much he doesn't know," Knox writes, "but he intends to learn," and even his hotel room offers plenty of mysteries to solve. He must figure out how to use the toilet, how to get dressed in his brown suit and brown wingtips, how to walk in this "pale pathetic" body. Much of this is played for broad, often scatological comedy. Unless you're a real insect lover, some of it will make your flesh crawl. The one sex scene is lifted straight from the Nature Channel, but in this context, it's hilarious.

When Kockroach finally rips the door off its hinges and walks out onto the streets of New York, he's terrified that some giant human being will stomp on him, which is not an entirely irrational fear: He sees billboards of enormous people all over Times Square. Convinced that smiling will ward off predators, he smiles all the time -- hardly the strangest thing about a man who eats his own regurgitated food and then licks his entire body clean.

The funniest parts of this early section show Kockroach learning to speak by mimicking the phrases and tones he hears all around him: "Got a light?" "Looking for a date?" "You got it, sweet pea." "I'm from out of town." "Move along, pal." "Gotta run." It's remarkable how many successful conversations he can have simply by parroting these phrases. As with Chauncey Gardiner, people hear what they want to hear.

Having the mind of a cockroach, he quickly finds success as a gangster. "Male cockroaches," the narrator notes, "are positively Washingtonian." (None of that pesty trouble with a conscience.) In one of many mock-serious interruptions, Knox explains the metaphysical dimension of his existence: "Cockroaches are not religious creatures. They take what they can as their due and live by a simple morality hardwired into their tiny brains. They never stop to contemplate their place in the great scheme of the universe for they have no doubts about their place in the great scheme of the universe. They are cockroaches. And whatever that sentence implies, they deal with it by surviving."

Strong and determined as he is, Kockroach needs guidance, and the novel needs some moral anguish to make it more than just a clever joke. Fortunately, that comes from a tortured soul named Mickey "Mite" Pimelia, a little hustler in a green suit who latches on to Kockroach for the rest of his life. (There's a joke in there for entomologists.) (No, I won't explain it; if that bugs you, look it up.) Mite narrates alternating chapters in his slang-ridden, noir voice, describing their parasitic relationship from the first moment he spots Kockroach strutting around Times Square: "It was the middle of that whole damn circus, beneath the Camel cigarette sign just off Forty-fourth Street, whilst I was handing out my leaflets with the sketch of a stripper looking oh so come-hither, that first I spots the Boss."

Mite isn't sure if this weird character is "the coolest cat on the Square . . . or some physically disabled vet," but together they rise quickly through the mob and eventually into national politics. (I have to mention here another Metamorphosis takeoff, a marvelous novel by Marc Estrin called The Half-Life of Gregor Samsa, which imagines the big bug surviving his family's abuse in Vienna and becoming a crucial figure in 20th-century history.) Tyler Knox is the pseudonym of William Lashner, a Philadelphia lawyer who publishes crime novels under his own name, and much of Kockroach is classic gangster parody, particularly those chapters narrated by Mite, who spends more time channeling Raymond Carver than Franz Kafka: "The only thing I ever been sure of, Champ, wheresever I go, disaster it follows sure as blood from a wound."

But there's plenty of rueful, Kafkaesque reflection on what it means to be human, too. Though Kockroach is a stunningly efficient killer, he can't understand the excess of human violence. His ordinary insect fears sound weirdly profound and existential. Who better to explain Shakespeare's lament: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods"? His kind has survived several cosmic calamities over millions of years, but once he's infected with the singularly human trait of language, Kockroach begins to pine for companionship, satisfaction, some assurance about the future. Only by clinging to his essential roachness can he hope to conquer the world.

Don't be squeamish; pick up this witty, unsettling book. Even if you can't read, you'll enjoy the little flip-movie printed on the bottom right corner of each page that shows a cockroach transforming into Kockroach. You'll think of him every time you turn on the bathroom light and surprise those little scavengers going about their business while you go about yours.

Reviewed by Ron Charles
Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.