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Marc Estrin is a writer, cellist, and activist living in Burlington, Vermont.
His works include Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, The Lamentations of Julius Marantz, Skulk, The Good Doctor Guillotin, and The Prison Notebooks of Alan Krieger (Terrorist).
Marc Estrin's website
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Most people don't like cockroaches; others are equally wary of Kafka. I love
both. The bugs were my playmates, growing up in the Bronx, and it was Kafka who
snatched away my reading virginity when I was sixteen: The Trial was the
first "real" book I ever read.
It was out of these idiosyncracies that I wrote Insect Dreams: The Half
Life of Gregor Samsa.
Kafka's Gregor is quite different from mine — a man
turned inexplicably into vermin, alienated from all others. His tale is briefly
told in "The Metamorphosis", a short story which challenged the world
in 1915, and continues to do so. But it seemed to me a shame to
"waste" this remarkable being, to let him shrivel and die so quickly.
So I just nabbed him --- stole the character out from under
his couch via some shady dealings on the part of his housekeeper, and threw him
into the world to see what he might pull off. We know from Kafka that Gregor-the-human
was a sweet man, supporting his family, looking after his sister, intelligent,
hard-working, dutiful. I imagined he'd have the same qualities as a large,
talking cockroach.
(I must inject here that Kafka does not explicitly call Gregor a cockroach.
Supreme artist that he was, he labeled him only ...
Andrew Sean Greer is the bestselling author of five works of fiction, including The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named a best book of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. He is the recipient of... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Insect Dreams
Try:
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
by Andrew Sean Greer
Tyler Knox is the pseudonym of former Philadelphia lawyer William Lashner, known for his Victor Carl legal thriller series, who decided to write under a new name not for the purposes of "rebranding or putting one over my ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Insect Dreams
Try:
Kockroach
by Tyler Knox
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Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.
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