Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa

A hilarious novel filled with cultural history, musical theory, nuclear physics, and a world of ideas follows Gregor Samsa, who, having metamorphosed into a cockroach, is sold into a Viennese sideshow by his chambermaid, where he lectures carnival crowds on the implications of Rilke and Herr Spengler, and over the course of thirty years and two continents, discovers the true meaning of his existence. 15,000 first printing.

Literature & Fiction

Estrin, Marc

Literary

Blue Hen

The metamorphosis of Kafka’s Gregor Samsa from fabric salesman to cockroach was surely one of the momentous transformations of the modern world. Now, in Marc Estrin’s astounding debut, Gregor undergoes yet another metamorphosis—one that propels him across the rocky and often ridiculous landscape of the early twentieth century.
In these continuously surprising pages, Estrin’s Gregor—secretly sold to a Viennese sideshow by the Samsas’ chambermaid—comes to sharpen his mind against those of Wittgenstein, Spengler and Einstein; dance to the crazy rhythm of American Prohibition; appear as a surprise witness at the Scopes trial; become intimately involved in Alice Paul’s feminist movement (and with Alice Paul); encounter the KKK; and confer with FDR, and Robert Oppenheimer—and emerge from it all as the very essence of modern conscience.

BERKLEY

Marc Estrin's Skulk is the sixth of his critically-acclaimed novels for lovers of intelligent fiction. Radical prof Richard Gronsky is swept off his feet by T.L. Skulkington, a sassy, right-wing superstar, during one of her liberal-bashing talks. Their romance struggles with political polarity until a run-in with Homeland Security brings Miss Skulkington's libertarian impulses to the fore, and "Skulk" is won over to Gronsky's causes -- secession of the Free State of Kansas, and 9/11 Truth. So begins the twosome's mad escapade to stage an Event and awaken the Sunflower State to The Issues of the Day. Joining forces with a mysterious Santa, they take flying lessons, and steal a Cessna to crash into Santa's department store. The reader is treated to a sophisticated parody of American political reality, a wild ride full of ironic twists and a stunning ending. In the Afterword, Estrin discusses his strategy in Skulk: to use comic fiction to probe dangerous real-world fictions parading as truth.

Skulk

Humor & Satire

Progressive Press

Alan Krieger, the hero of Estrin's previous novel, Golem Song, is thrown in the tank for some not-atypical disruptive behavior. He meets several challenging cell mates, and when home, bailed out by his mother, composes a tortured diary of his three-hour imprisonment, along with an embedded novella about one of his cellies, The Revenge of Endymion Tush, and includes an explanatory autobiography, The Book of Krieger, by Alan Krieger. The cover painting by Delia Robinson and Vincent Van Gogh is a telling preview. The Notebooks were originally planned to be written in blood on toilet paper squares, but weren’t.

The Prison Notebooks of Alan Krieger (Terrorist): And containing within an entire novella, THE REVENGE OF ENDYMION TUSH, as well as an ... The Book of Krieger, by Alan Krieger

Spuyten Duyvil

Peter Schumann and his Bread &amp; Puppet Theater are likely the most important, and surely the longest-lasting, contributors to modern American theater history. Since the early sixties Schumann and his puppeteers have been pouring out work after work on every scale: political works, mysterious works, grand works, modest works, works on the street and works in fields, works to be played in every size theater on four continents, books, prints, posters, and banners which live as show-and-tell in so many homes. Now Ron Simon and Marc Estrin, a remarkable photographer, and a long-time puppeteer, who have each in his own way contributed to the shows, recorded events, and reflected on them. Out of their experiences they have created Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread &amp; Puppet Theater. Far more than history or documentation, they identify eight archetypes engaged repeatedly by Peter Schumann and his crew. Their book consists of parallel meditations—the texts not commenting on the photos, the photos not illustrating the texts—unified and intertwined by the chapter themes of Death, Fiend, Beast, Human, World, Gift, Bread, and Hope. Altogether, it's a collaboration that reflects their sixty-odd man-years of personal experience in, hidden narratives of, and speculative reflections on Peter Schumann's projects, ever-more relevant to our times. This is a book that will engage both fans and newcomers—an inside-view of Peter Schumann's political-artistic world.

Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater

Humor & Entertainment

Simon, Ronald T.

Movies

Chelsea Green Publishing

At once a chess master, a linguist, an athlete and an innocent in love, Arnold passes through the racial tensions of Mansfield, Texas (home of the author of Black Like Me) in the 1950s, the anti-war movement at Harvard, and both the Upper East Side and the Bowery, meeting Noam Chomsky, Al Gore, and Leonard Bernstein in the process, and finally learning the meaning of meaning.

The Education of Arnold Hitler

Unbridled Books

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, Gregorrescued 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 existenceand the culmination of a tale that is as intellectually ambitious as it is warmhearted and funny.

Insect Dreams

Contemporary

By some incalculable force of human attraction, Alan Krieger has two lovers. A man of his girth and compulsion, a man who cannot stop talking and who believes the world to be completely irrational, should not take one companion for granted, much less two. Women who can tolerate his anger, his obsessions, and his antic clowning all at the same time are not easy to come by. But when the thought arises in Alan that he’s been chosen” to deliver Jewish America from the threat of Anti-Semitism, then all his connections to reality fall away, including those to his lovers and his family. Recalling the folktale of the Golemthe Frankensteinian giant of clay that saved the Jews in 16th Century PragueAlan lays out a plan of attack and then sets to making the most outrageous of preparations in the culture wars, in New York City at the turn of the millennium. Like each of the acclaimed Estrin novels that have preceded it, Golem Song is an allusive, manic, and wildly comic approach to some of the most serious and difficult cultural questions of our time.

Golem Song

United States

Who would benefit if they really did bring The Rapture on? Marc Estrin follows another of his strange protagonists through a world troubled by what it knows and by how it applies that knowledge. From the first page, we are plunged into a global riot of paranoia, joy, and fear. But something is sadly familiar here, perhaps because we have been taught to anticipate a world in which people suddenly fly off the planet. It might be The Rapture. Or it might be some violation of the force of gravity. Whatever it is, it’s spreading madness, religious hysteria, and some truly formidable government powers. The voice of these Lamentations is a sixty-something, club-footed scientist named Julius Marantz, an obsessive researcher who suffers both from forbidden knowledge and an insistent conscience. As his spirit and his heart begin to fail, Julius realizes what is lost to him: a childhood of possibility, the consolation of belief, and the undying optimism of a father who taught him the principles of physics on the roller-coaster and the parachute jump. Partly a portrait of cynical politics and religious fervor, part scientific speculation and even a meditation on the glories of Coney Island, The Lamentations of Julius Marantz traces the rise and fall of science in a truly personal story that finally fairly ascends.

The Lamentations of Julius Marantz

The most unlikely life of a most unsightly man. Marc Estrin discovers that another writer's novel-THE NOSE- not only has spawned a bizarre cult among the nation's youth but also is based on the extraordinary life of a real person-an outcast named Alexei Pigov. Estrin searches Alexei out and ask him to provide annotations to THE NOSE. Alexei says that-although the events of the novel might, for the most part, be real-the purported reasons for them are all damnable lies. On the left-hand page of The Annotated Nose we read THE NOSE itself, and take in its beautifully unsettling illustrations by Delia Robinson. On the right-hand page we follow Alexei's complaints-always surprising and often farreaching. The layers in Estrin's remarkable comic book are as multiple, eclectric, and outrageous as the sequence of mask Alexei wears to hide his face from the world over the caroming trajectory of hie most unlikely life. The Annotated Nose is at once Marc Estrin's most playful and most ambitious work to date.

The Annotated Nose: An Annotated Edition of William Hundwasser's Cult Classic The Nose

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Estrin, Marc. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Estrin, Marc

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Estrin, Marc. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa

Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa

Skulk

The Prison Notebooks of Alan Krieger (Terrorist): And containing within an entire novella, THE REVENGE OF ENDYMION TUSH, as well as an ... The Book of Krieger, by Alan Krieger

Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater

The Education of Arnold Hitler

Insect Dreams

Golem Song

The Lamentations of Julius Marantz

The Annotated Nose: An Annotated Edition of William Hundwasser's Cult Classic The Nose