Rating: 
Summary: An Existential Cockroach
Review: Twentieth century history is brilliantly reimagined through the eyes of Gregor Samsa, the fabric salesman turned cockroach from Kafka's Metamorphosis. Gregor begins his "half-life" as a circus performer in Vienna, and then, later, when he migrates to the United States, becomes an elevator operator, as he continues his conscious and unconscious musings on humanity and inhumanity. Gregor lives the "American Dream", following an unimaginable career path, becoming one of the 20th century's foremost existentialists, artists, activists, and insurance industry risk assessors, and in doing so, he provides a funny, tragic, and thought provoking critique of Western civilization, particularly the United States. Gregor suffers from an unhealing wound in his back, inflicted when his father, frightened by his new form, threw an apple at him, a metaphor that is implicitly explored throughout the novel. Gregor stumbles upon so many pivitol figures throughout the book, that in that respect, Insect Dreams is reminiscent of Forest Gump, yet that allusion is delightful. Estrin is erudite, so at times one might need to look up a fact or a figure, but the entire experience is worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: Estrin did it. He made me love a roach.
Review: When an imaginative and gifted author can use a giant roach as his main character, include a romance between the roach and a human, and still make you love him, he's accomplished a colossal feat. Yet these are only a few of Estrin's marvelous achievements in this thoughtful, but very playful, and often very funny chronicle of western history and thought from World War I through the dropping of the atomic bomb in World War II. Gregor Samsa, the famous salesman turned roach in Kafka's Metamorphosis, ends up not in Kafka's dustbin, but as part of a Viennese freak show run by Amadeus Hoffnung, in the opening chapter, "Tails of Hoffnung."
Reciting Rilke and discoursing on Spengler's Decline of the West, Gregor attracts the attention of writer Robert Musil, who tells him that although western humanity is finished, that "Society...is in a larval state. What it needs is a larval model to lead it onward, upward, and out of the corral," and Gregor is that larval model, his ironic task being to teach us what it means to be human.
In lighthearted, fast-paced prose, Estrin describes Gregor's emigration to New York, his search for identity, and his eventual connection to seminal events in western history and the people responsible for them. The music of Charles Ives, the Scopes trial (at which Gregor, ironically, testifies), the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, the election and administration of FDR, and the development of the atomic bomb are just a few of Estrin's sensitively presented turning points of American history. At Eleanor Roosevelt's urging, Gregor accepts the offer to move into the White House, where he lives, literally, as part of the "kitchen cabinet" and works at the Department of Agriculture as an exterminator.
Extermination and the death of "others" are, in fact, strong themes throughout this novel, despite its playfulness, and an increasing gravity and darkness develop as the plot progresses. As Gregor, the king of otherness, shows us, the U.S., historically, has not been immune to prejudice, and he is remarkably critical of FDR for failing to take an early stand against the Holocaust when clear evidence was available to him. Still, this powerful book ends on a positive note, one which readers of this extraordinary tale will long remember--and, I suspect, share with their friends. Mary Whipple
Rating: 
Summary: franz is spinning in his grave! (2.5 stars)
Review: Yes, it was funny in spots, initially cleverly conceived, crammed with interesting character sketches and re-imaginings of history, and the prose was smooth---but too many notes, Mr. Estrin. He met Wittgenstein, and Roentgen, and Alice Paul, and Ives, and FDR, and Feynman, and Oppenheimer! Yet where's the "so what?" of this story? What (exactly) makes Gregor stand apart from any other, non-cockroach, character who might have fit that particular slot? (The fact that no one seems too upset by his being a giant cockroach only serves my point: that there's really nothing peculiar about the "hero" of "Insect Dreams," nothing that couldn't manifest itself in some random human; say, Forrest Gump. Although this book is far more readable than that film was watchable.) There are so many places where the authorial camera treads in too-slow motion, forcing its readers to wade through pages of what it presents as but really isn't significant and overly charged with emotion. (Not one, but three lengthy descriptions of modern musical performances are what I'm thinking of here, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. And, come on, if you want your character to start visiting the Library of Congress, there are more thought-provoking, or simpler, ways than to fleetingly introduce a pointless love letter.) The links (such as they are) to "the original" Kafka creation are tenuous at best. Perhaps they needn't be there at all, but an author appropriating another author's character has a duty, however small, to the original's memory. Kafka's creations are non-linear, mercurial, at times just plain unfathomable. Estrin takes up the gauntlet---one of the most bizarre and disconsolate literary creatures, full of dramatic potential if you want to pretend he didn't die at the end of Kafka's story---and squashes him flat, into traditional space-time narrative (with a few, overly-constructed and out-of-place exceptions), domesticates him, makes him an actuarial wannabe-philosopher who complains but doesn't act. Not that we need another Kafka, but again, why that particular cockroach? (The one clever bit is the letter exchange between Gregor and Hannah Arendt, where creation gets to rail against creator and even, in a metadramatical gesture, confesses he's tried to burn a copy of "The Trial.") But why, why, why must you butcher the Bard? (p.446 of the hardcover) If you want factual historical information, chase up Estrin's generous bibliography; if you want fictional accounts of approximately the same time period, read Chabon's brilliant "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay;" if you want weird, for the love of god read Kafka. If you want "so what?" I wouldn't look here. Don't get me wrong---this isn't a stupid book. But it will leave you hanging metaphysically.
|
