Book Review | Inventive, unsettling roach in man's clothing

By Tyler Knox

Morrow. 368 pp. $23.95

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In Tyler Knox's very clever new novel, a cockroach wakes up in a dive hotel and discovers to his alarm that he is a man. That is, the form of a man. He is still cockroach to the core - survival-bent, unsentimental, unsparing, hungry.

And as he scurries out into a very noir, 1950s version of New York's Times Square, be prepared to be taken on one of the most inventive, unsettling and, at times, terribly funny literary rides in quite some time.

Kockroach is the name of this adventure, and if you're looking for parallels to Kafka's The Metamorphosis, you'll give it up after the first few pages. Kockroach, Jerry Blatta as he comes to be called, is nothing like poor old Gregor Samsa.

Blatta looks at mankind through the eyes of a roach - and you, by the way, will know more about the critters by the time you finish this book than you ever thought you wanted to know. He doesn't want to be a man, but he doesn't waste time bemoaning the fact that he is one. He adapts.

"Cockroaches don't dwell on the past," Knox writes. "Firmly entrenched in the present tense, they are awesome coping machines."

He has help. Early on, Blatta gets tied in with Mickey Pimelia, a.k.a. Mite, a sad little man in a green suit who has been on life's losing end since he was a kid in Philadelphia. Mite, who knows nothing of Blatta's origins, latches onto "the Boss" and his strength and, at the same time, becomes something of Blatta's unwitting guide to humankind.

Mite, however, knows the Boss is one strange, dispassionately brutal dude. This is not a beautiful friendship, more of an arrangement.

And Mite is complex and tortured. His detective-novel-diction is laid on a bit too thick, but Mite's longings and inner conflicts add texture and humanity to this tale. And then there's a girl, Celia. The novel switches back and forth among Blatta, Mite and Celia's viewpoints, with lots of silhouettes of the main characters and cockroaches along the way. (Whoever was responsible for the presentation of this book earned his or her money.)

And Blatta never loses his essential roachness, even down to his ever-present brown suits. He does whatever it takes to survive, and he does it unquestioningly, matter-of-factly, without mercy or any particular malice. In a bug-eat-bug world, he feasts.

No wonder that as a man, he is destined to soar. Awesomely strong, Blatta rises through the Times Square underworld. When circumstances force him to re-create himself, he makes a killing as a businessman. Politics isn't far behind. He is uniquely qualified for these fields, as we come to see.

Knox, a.k.a. William Lashner, a former Philadelphia lawyer who lives in Wynnewood and is the author of legal thrillers, seems to have had a great time telling his tale. His asides on the nature of roachdom vs. mankind are witty and amusing - and they work. But Kockroach is chilling, too; keep an eye out for the part about the drug-sick prostitute. The counterbalance is well-done. It keeps the story fresh and moving.

In the end, no one character captures your heart. Usually, that would be a flaw. In this case, it doesn't matter much. The effect is the whole.

Kockroach, of course, is a fantasy. But, then again, we live in a world where thugs battle thugs without a thought about innocents who get in the way; where corporate lions ravage workers' retirement funds without remorse; and politicians, well, need we say more?

Now we have a roach in man's clothing - no conscience, no regrets, limited emotions, a creature driven by voracious appetites. Behold, a raging success story.

Kockroach, one might say, is a tale for our time.