Initially Jim seems to be merely a cockroach in human form and retains his erstwhile access to the collective “pheromonal unconscious”. At some point he parted company with his customary self and came “under the influence of a greater, guiding force” – “the collective spirit”. The previous night Jim had left his home, sticking as ever to the gutters. The only remnant of his old brown shell is his slightly gingery hair. His head is large, and his eyes can move. Because he no longer has a compound eye, everything appears “oppressively colourful”. In his mouth “a slab of slippery meat lay squat and wet”. As a writer, McEwan is nothing if not methodical, and he dutifully logs the relevant transformations. In the opening pages, an insect resident in the Palace of Westminster, Jim Sams, wakes up to finds that he has become prime minister. It even ends up generating one or two potent ideas, though admittedly not about populism or Europe. Though intended as a jeu d’esprit – if an exercise in hand-wringing can truly lay claim to that status – The Cockroach offers a more commanding display of its author’s strengths than Salman Rushdie’s similarly peeved though more outwardly hard-working Cervantes update, Quichotte. Ian McEwan’s new novella, written at a clip and published in time for the latest Brexit deadline, starts by inverting the set-up of Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis”, and then moves into the terrain of very narrowly topical satire: defiant parliament, recumbent cabinet, doltish US president, and so on.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |