Insect Dreams - Estrin, Marc
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The metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa was surely one of the momentous transformations of modern times. Kafka's burning vision of the future ended with Gregor being swept into a dustbin. But what if Gregor were to survive and live to challenge the wrongs clouding humanity's horizon? In Insect Dreams, Gregor—rescued by profiteers— will sharpen his mind against the minds of Wittgenstein and Rilke, dance to the crazy rhythms of Prohibition, and appear as a surprise witness at the Scopes trial. Eventually, he'll meet FDR, join the brain trust, and move into the White House. But a talking cockroach with…mehr

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Produktbeschreibung
The metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa was surely one of the momentous transformations of modern times. Kafka's burning vision of the future ended with Gregor being swept into a dustbin. But what if Gregor were to survive and live to challenge the wrongs clouding humanity's horizon? In Insect Dreams, Gregor—rescued by profiteers— will sharpen his mind against the minds of Wittgenstein and Rilke, dance to the crazy rhythms of Prohibition, and appear as a surprise witness at the Scopes trial. Eventually, he'll meet FDR, join the brain trust, and move into the White House. But a talking cockroach with an ethical agenda can wear out his welcome, and soon Gregor is reassigned as a risk management consultant for the Manhattan Project. What follows is nothing less than the explosive birth of contemporary existence—and the culmination of a tale that is as intellectually ambitious as it is warmhearted and funny.
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Autorenporträt
Marc Estrin lebt in Vermont, wo er sich als Schriftsteller, Cellist, Puppenspieler und Friedensaktivist betätigt. Im Alter von 57 Jahren entdeckte er seine Begabung fürs Schreiben.
Rezensionen
Estrin communicates a sadness but also gives us a hero of such nobility that we can't help but hope that our current period of unspeakable human violence will turn out differently. Albuquerque Journal As brilliant as Pynchon and as funny as the best of Robbins and Vonnegut, this is a generous gift to the idea-starved fiction reader. Heart, head, hilarity and history all rolled passionately into one. Don't miss this! Booksense With wit, humour and daunting intellect, Estrin resurrects one of literature's most recognized symbols of the plight of modern man, and sends the renowned cockroach scuttling through the discoveries and disasters of the first half of the 20th century.... Estrin's evocative and allusive prose trips lightly through some dark territory, and for all the novel's hilarity it is ultimately heart-wrenching, strangely bleak and beautiful..... And given our current war context, Estrin's hysterical plotting of the life of this über-outcast -- his daunting harvest of inherited wisdom so flagrantly ignored, his implicit warnings about the often despicable drift of human progress -- could not be more relevant. Toronto Globe and Mail Such is Estrin's genius that we're quickly caught up in the compelling quest of a human cockroach to raise mankind above its destructive instincts....Ultimately, "Insect Dreams" is a compilation of our dreams. It's the kind of book from which one wakes clutching surreal scenes, desperate to tell others, delighted and baffled and horrified. Of course, Gregor makes a particularly peculiar savior; what do we need the moral example of a frail insect for - so despised and dejected of men? But stranger things have happened. Christian Science Monitor In a brilliant and meticulously researched - and eccentric - novel, Estrin lays out Samsa's course through the 20th century, right up to the first atomic explosion at Los Alamos, in which Samsa is, apparently, extinguished....Estrin's novel is unsparing in its conclusion that what America and its adversaries have bred is a world culture that will annihilate us unless we find a way seriously to begin to change it. Des Moines Register Written a in a crisp, entirely absorbing style, describable only as inescapably intriguing, Insect Dreams unearths a debate, which, while possibly unconscious, nevertheless rages in all of us....Few texts of philosophy can deal with such a subject with the same honesty and clarity of this work. While the actuality of existence is, as always, an incomplete act, this work shall rank among those that serve to guide our opinions and thoughts. Ambitious and yet delivering all and more than its implied promises, Insect Dreams is beyond essential reading, it is essential thinking. Historical Novels Review Like his version of Kafka's creation, Estrin, with his appropriated Gregor, is busy 'building history from venomous scares,' and furthering that history with a wit deepened by a vivid depiction of a pained creature suffused with generosity, curiosity and heroic persistence. New York Times Book Review In this remarkably assured debut, Estrin engrafts fantasy and morality on historical actuality to arrive at a form known as anatomy - a discourse on an encyclopedic variety of subjects focusing less on people than ideas or attitudes. "Moby Dick" is a literary example, "My Dinner with Andre" a movie version. Estrin's achievement is to make Gregor not merely a mouthpiece or even a symbol but an expression of humanity testing itself against the darker forces of science and technology over which it appears to have lost control. "Insect Dreams" meets that test in the mordant tradition Kafka himself might have applauded. Raleigh News and Observer Estrin's understanding of 20th-Century Western culture is as disturbing as Kafka's - in fact it is Kafka's, tempered with hindsight and a few laughs. The author moves at such a rapid pace it is tempting to think of him as Umberto Eco on speed. But his view of modern cultu…mehr