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the complete review - fiction

Insect Dreams

by
Marc Estrin

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : entertaining, often clever, and a fun idea -- but tries to do too much with it

See our review for fuller assessment.

Note: The Washington Post reviewer is under the impression that the first name of the author of this book is "Mark". This is apparently not correct.

  From the Reviews:

• "It's only a matter of time before this new cult classic inspires a companion collection of footnotes and commentary. Indeed, if Insect Dreams weren't so perpetually funny, its philosophical ruminations and its encyclopedia of cameo appearances would be downright intimidating." - Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
  
  
• "(A) sort of Ragtime for roaches. (...) This literary bugatelle could easily have become excruciatingly cute (.....) But as Insect Dreams proceeds, it takes on its own logic." - Ken Tucker, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "Estrin's amusing and deeply sympathetic narrative weaves between the privileges of being an insect and the genius of being human. Through his encounters with a stream of historical figures burdened with crucial decisions, Gregor defines his transcendant mission: to save the world from itself. (...) There is a brief epilogue incorporating Rilke and Emily Dickinson which is probably a mistake." - Lesley Chamberlain, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "Estrin is so intent on driving home a basic set of aesthetic and political points that, had he substituted Miss Lonelyhearts for Gregor Samsa, he would have ended up with much the same book. That said, Insect Dreams has a great deal going for it: Estrin may be more concerned with issue and idea than image and act, but he's passionate in his beliefs, and has a gift for translating those passions to the page. The question is whether that gift is best served by fiction (.....) (A) strange, frustrating, and only occasionally fulfilling debut." - Alex Abramovich, The Washington Post

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       In his first novel Marc Estrin makes a daring move: he co-opts a famous literary character and makes him his own. The protagonist of Insect Dreams is none other than the 20th century's most famous insect-man, Franz Kafka's metamorphosed Gregor Samsa. Gregor, as readers may recall, woke up one day to find that he had turned into a man-sized cockroach. Kafka's Samsa did not fare that well, but Estrin offers an alternative version of events at the beginning of his novel. Estrin suggests that Samsa escaped his Kafkaesque fate and was instead brought to a Viennese freak show, where he became, for a time, a popular exhibit -- before moving on to bigger things
       In best Forrest Gump fashion Estrin makes the insect-man a participant in several of the 20th century's significant events (and a witness to many more). Samsa becomes a witness (or rather: an exhibit) at the Scopes trial, for example, and he winds up working on the Manhattan project in Los Alamos.
       Estrin decides that his extraordinary figure must meet many of the extraordinary figures of his times. It is, admittedly, part of the fun of the novel -- but ultimately also its greatest weakness. The author's obsession with celebrity to make his points greatly diminishes his otherwise often impressive achievement.
       Who does Gregor meet ? Who doesn't he meet, more like it. The first convergences of fact and fiction aren't too bad. There's Robert Musil (whose Törless Samsa calls "one of my crucial books"), and then Wilhelm Roentgen -- called in to show that Samsa is truly a cockroach through and through. The meeting with Ludwig Wittgenstein, just going through his teacher-phase, is already more contrived. Charles Ives -- encountered once Samsa is already in America -- looks like a return to something more promising, but then the insect-man goes off to work for F.D.R. (and finds quarters in the White House) and it plunges downhill from there. Eventually the science folk crop up -- first Edward Teller and Leo Szillard, and then Einstein himself -- and Samsa eventually gets sent off to help out in Los Alamos (where he deals with Oppenheimer and Feynman and all the rest) and only the big boom of the first atomic test manages to bring things to a screeching halt.
       Fortunately, there are only four stations for Samsa: Vienna, New York, Washington D.C., and Los Alamos. Still, in each insect-man Samsa is, peripherally at least (and sometimes quite directly), involved in the making of history. It gets to be a bit much -- and in the end is far too much.
       The shame of it is, that aside from the over-the-top historical involvement, Estrin has the makings of an excellent novel here. He writes well, most of the time. The book is conversation-heavy, but the dialogue is good and quite clever. Many of the descriptions and observations, too, are nicely done. Occasionally, the philosophizing gets to be a bit much, as the book teeters towards the ponderous, but Estrin usually manages to pull it back (except for in the rather sorry finale, a long after the fact afterword).
       Estrin's characters -- commoners and celebrities alike -- too are well presented. Gregor Samsa, in particular, is a generally impressive and sympathetic character.
       Taking such a well-known literary figure and trying to use him for one's own literary ends is, of course, a dangerous ambition, but Estrin pulls it off quite well. A bit too much is made of Samsa's seeping, unhealing wound (from the apple thrown at him by his father), and too little of his arthropodous appearance (it is noticed when it Estrin needs to make some point with it, but most of the time people seem completely oblivious to Samsa's otherness).
       Occasionally Estrin gets over-explicit, as when he has Samsa acknowledge:

Jews are cockroaches, in a way. They must become hard on the outside from so much kicking around. But they are soft on the inside.

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Links:

• Every System Has Its Bugs - excerpt
• Reading Guide at PenguinPutnam

• alibi
• The Austin Chronicle
• Christian Science Monitor
• Jewish Bulletin of Northern California
• The Washington Post
• Willamette Week (scroll down for review)

• Who Put The Devil In Evelyn's Eyes ? - excerpt from The Sad Life and Untimely Death of Arnold Hitler

• See Index of Contemporary American fiction at the complete review
• See Index of Real People in Works of Fiction

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About the Author:

       Marc Estrin is an American author.

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© 2002-2010 the complete review

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