appROACHES:
an annotated bibliography of
COCKROACHES
in starring and cameo roles in the creative arts.

At the beginning of a review of Donald Harington's novel The Cockroaches of Stay More  in The Village Voice , Pegan Kennedy asks: "Sure, there are lots of bunnies in literature--Peter, the White Rabbit, the heroes of Watership Down --but what about roaches?  I mean real roaches, not the Kafka kind.  Real roaches spit, scatter their legs around, get drunk on our stale beer, know what's inside our trashcans.  They're always watching us; they see our secret lives."  In part, although it concerns itself with the Kafkaesque as well as with protagonists and narrators who are realistically presented roaches, this bibliography begins to answer Kennedy's question: "what about roaches?"  Its length suggests that, in fact, though not as frequently evoked as rabbits, roaches are no strangers to the pages of literature worldwide.  They appear as images and symbols and as important details in the back g round, and as characters in human and roach dramas in every imaginable genre, from children's literature, folklore and fable, to poetry, fine and popular, from horror and sci fi flicks to high drama, from comics to fine art--and, of course, in music.  And everywhere they appear, as Kennedy suggests, they are "watching us."  What they see (and tell as they consume our trash) is often disturbing--not what we want to see and hear.

That disturbance draws on the American public's hatred of insects in general and cockroaches in particular (Kellert's survey showed them to be the "least-loved" of all nonhumans), making them candidates for exploitation films ("horror, fantasy, and science fiction" [Mertins 89]) like Mimic and Bug.  They are not infrequently equated with alien extraterrestrials ( Starship Troopers , Men in Black ), invariably perceived as dangerous to humans.  Such films, in turn, add to the public's fear and hatred as do ads for roach-killers of various sorts.

How nonhumans are treated in popular culture is probably more important than their treatment in so-called fine art if one is primarily interested in the formation and directing of attitudes.  It is worth noting that public perception of insects in Japan is quite different from public perception in the United States.  They are seen as "much friendlier and more likeable" and therefore insects in films are more likely to be treated sympathetically as they are in Twilight of the Cockroaches (Reid 47).  Only very recently in a film like Joe's Apartment do we find cockroaches appealing in a film intended for a general American audience.

With amazing regularity, the cockroach represents or symbolizes the plight of those, world wide, most severely stomped on by the dominant, still pa triarchal power structure.  There is even a suggestion that, because of that association, the roach may prove one of the heroes of 21stcentury ecofeminism, dedicated as that movement is to cleaning up the remains of the patriarchy--of all modes of dominance--and establishing healthy, balanced ecosystems for all life forms.  The goal?--making us all as likely to survive as is the ultimate survivor, the roach.

The entries appearing in bold are works in which the cockroach appears as more than symbol or image, allegorical stand-in for humans, or part of a setting which is the background for human drama (Those with a ~ before the artist's name are paintings, etchings, or sculptures).  These works foreground what Kennedy called "real roaches," concerned with their own dramas, for whom humans, our trash and our secret lives, are background detail.    Annotations from secondary sources as well as cameo cockroach appearance in otherwise roach-free works appear in italics (corrections and additions would be welcome!).

Marion W. Copeland
mwcopeland@comcast.com

Index:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

A

Abrahams, Marc and Don Kater.   "Lament del Cockroach"--the Libretto: A mini-opera for Nobel Laureates and mezzo-sopranos.  Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, October 3, 1996 on the occasion of the Sixth First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.  The complete libretto is available on-line at http://www.improb.com/ig/ig96-cockroach-libretto.html  Photos: Annals of Improbable Research Jan/Feb 1996.  Set in the future when most species have disappeared, the plot focuses on Thelma LaRoach and her friend Louise.  Beset by the advances of males of other insect species, these female cockroaches yearn for a male of their own species.  A meteorite from Mars carrying bacteria deadly to cockroaches (accompanied by music adapted from Wagner) intervenes, killing these last two cockroaches.  The other species, immune, join with the plants--all that now remains on earth (except the bacteria!)--to celebrate (with music from Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus") the extinction of the cockroach.  

Achebe, Chinua.  The Anthills of the Savannah.

Acosta, Oscar Zeda. The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973). New York:
Vintage, 1989. " The cockroach's association with the urban underside, including immigrants and the drug scene, seems as truly international as is the cockroach. It is as clear in The Cockroach Dance (1979) by the Kenyan novelist Meja Mwangi and in The Cockroach Opera (1985) by the Indonesian playwright Norbertus Riantiarno as in The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973), the work of Chicano novelist Oscar Z. Acosta. All these works treat the displacement, alienation, and poverty of outsiders in modern urban life " (Copeland 1993 233).

Aesop. " Aristophanes' cockroach gains resonance from the one Aesopian fable that includes a cockroach character. The dung-beetle or cockroach avenges the killing by an eagle of his friend the hare, who had given the cockroach asylum. First the cockroach destroys the eagle's nest. Then, when the eagle puts his eggs in Zeus's lap, the roach "flies up to Olympus and deposits dung on the god's lap." Zeus leaps up and in the process of brushing off the cockroach droppings destroys the eagle's eggs (Davies 3). Since the eagle is associated with War, it is not difficult to see Aristophanes' scene [in Peace] as a variant of the fable, to associate the weakness of the farmer with the hare, and to see the cockroach in both cases as the means of unearthing the chthonic symbol (Peace, the hare) of life " (Copeland 1993 232).

Alcaraz, Lalo.  La Cucaracha: A Daily Comic Strip.  Syndicated in November 2002 and distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, the strip “is the FIRST political Latino daily comic strip to be nationally syndicated….  Bringing barrio life to its readers, the strip explores issues of ethnicity, biculturalism, youth, immigration and politics with brutally thought provoking satire.”  The strip with its politically radical title character,first appeared in the Los Angeles Weekly in 1998 (http://www.lacucaracha.com/index2.html).    

Algren, Nelson.  The Man With the Golden Arm (1949).  New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997.  "

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Umbrella Man scoop a roach off the bar in a movement surprisingly swift for one so sluggish--and in the same movement jam it between his teeth.  Frankie's hand stopped on the glass: here came Umbrella Man, the bug's blood streaking down teeth and chin and the bug itself crushed--feelers still waving between the teeth--'Man!  Wash!  Gimme wash!'--pleading between the clenched teeth and his smeared face right up to Frankie's.

"Frankie turned his head away, shoved the beer toward Umbrella's and didn't turn his head back till he hear Umbrella drain the glass to the last drop.

" 'He never done anything like that before,' Frankie complained to the widow Wieczorek.  'What's getting into him?'

" 'He does it all the time now,' Widow explained with a certain pride; as if she had taught him such a trick."  (quoted in Schweid 4-5)

Al-Hakim, Tawfig.  Fate of a Cockroach: Four Plays of Freedom (1973) .
Trans. From the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies.  London: Heinemann,
1973.  Two juxtaposed sets of characters, one human and one cockroach, work out their respective dramas, almost unaware of one another until each drama reaches its climax, in a Cairo apartment.  Since the subtitle of the volume containing the play is  Four Plays of Freedom, there is little doubt that freedom is the play's main theme.  The Introduction by Denys Johnson-Davies claims that "while he has never entered any political arena, he has none the less throughout his career shown himself deeply concerned with such fundamental and potentially dangerous issues as justice and truth, good and evil and, above all, freedom[a theme suggested as well by the title of his autobiography, The Prison of Life]" (vii).  He continues: "In Fate of a Cockroach, man's natural love of freedom, his refusal to despair in the face of adversity, are exemplified in the cockroach's strivings to climb out of the bath" (vii), into which the cockroach King has fallen.  Ironically the humans in the play demonstrate no such survival instinct.  While the husband, who identifies with the hopeless plight of the roach, simply watches the creature struggle, the wife demands its death.  Neither seem capable of compassion or love for either the cockroach or one another.  Ultimately, the Cook draws a bath for the Wife and drowns the Cockroach, removing it from the water with a flick of her fingers.  It immediat ely becomes a prize of the ants who inhabit the apartment although the roach is too large to fit through the crack they use for egress and exit.  Again the humans watch without intervening, the wife muttering, "Having finished with the heroism of cockroaches we've now started on the genius of ants!" (73).  Again the Cook takes matters into her own hands, mopping up the stream of ants.  The Wife then leaves for work ordering her husband to spend his day reorganizing her closets.  The play ends as he remarks to the Cook: "bring the bucket and rag and wipe me out of existence" (76).

Alien Empire. National Geographic. PBS January 1996. 3-part Documentary
"The gist of…the documentary…is the irony that we are surrounded by alien empires yet look for them to swarm in from other universes in UFO's while we go about exterminating the ones that surround us. The panic caused by the idea of killer cockroaches (the stuff of films like Bug and Nest )…exposes how mindless the human horror of real roaches is. It serves, in fact, in much cockroach literature to point out similarly mindless negative steriotypes lethal to what should be less alien nations of humans.
        " Alien Empires faces its viewers not only with the beauties and wonders of the insect world, but with the real probability that they and not humans are the planet's dominant life form and the almost certain likelihood that they, having evolved before us, are better adapted to survive than we ar e" (Copeland 1996 10).

All's Quiet in Sparkle City . “One offering [of May Berenbaum's insect fear festival], an antiwar film from the early 1970s, equates efforts to eradicate cockroaches with genocide” (Angier 118).

An American Tale. Don Bluth. 1986. Amblin Entertainment feature-length animated cartoon (Leskosky 63).

Anthony, Patricia.   Brother Termite (1993). New York: Ace Books, 1995. Though not specifically about cockroaches, the termite is so close a relative that a novel in which they are the major characters is worth pursuing--especially when it is a fast-moving and exciting tale that along the way gives a pretty accurate view of termite society.

Applegate, K. A. Animorphs: The Reunion (1999). New York et al: Scholastic Books, 1999.
In order to save his mother from the Yeerks, the aliens who are in the process of taking over the humans race in the young adult series by Applegate, Marco must "make the ultimate sacrifice," morphing into "'Everyone's favorite houseguest. The wily cockroach'" (32). He and his teenage friends, contemporary descendants of Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series, have gained the power to shapeshift from another alien whose people have been destroyed by a Yeerk invasion. He hopes it will help these young heroes defeat the invaders and save the Earth. Here and in other novels in the series where the young heroes find it advantageous to morph into insects, it is clear this is the hardest change to adapt to because the insect is so different from their human selves, making it essential for them to learn to see and think in what for humans seem alien ways.

No insect is better adapted to enter the office building where Marco's mother is than the cockroach: "the roach was the way to go."

Marco narrates: They say that after the big one, total nuclear annihilation, when every other living thing has been turned into a pile of glowing mud, roaches will still be powering over the ruins of civilization.

The amazing indestructible roach. They adapt almost immediately to whatever poison is unleashed on them. And they eat almost anything--books, glue, plants, dead fish, old sneakers. It's almost impossible to destroy them.

I like that about cockroaches. (36)

Not only do Marco, Tobias, and Ax (their alien ally) inhabit cockroach bodies. They acquire as well cockroach brains and instincts. They have to fight the urge to seek cover in dark places when they descend the 23 stories from the roof to the office where Marco had seen his mother: "Floor after floor! Bare escape after bare escape. Skittering, scrabbling, fighting, running…" (43).

When finally they reach the correct floor, they scoot under the fire door, "the steel scraping our backs, and into the hallway" only to be spied by a human who, of course, tries to stomp on them. Only after he gives up and boards the elevator can they scurry "on until we reached what I was sure was the door…. Up along the doorjamb, then across the surface of the door to the base of the window set in the center." Although the roach's vision isn't easy to adjust to, the office appears normal. However, the doorjamb "has an impenetrable seal." Using the air vent for access, "scrambling through scallerings of lint and ash," they discover the office they'd seen is a hologram hiding a Yeerk feeding pool (45-49). Realizing he cannot save his mother because her body is possessed by a Yeerk slug, Marco sadly returns to his normal form (which isn't human either. Since he had failed early in the series to regain his human form in the allotted time, Marco is now permanently a hawk able to communicate and cooperate with his human friends).

Applegate's fiction encourages her readers to question the boundaries that separate species as well as to appreciate and recognize the strengths of every species--even the least-loved cockroach. Alison Lurie notes that “Another great attraction of the Animorph books is that they provide thrilling, scientifically convincing descriptions of what it might be like to be an animal” (“Reading at Escape Velocity.” 51).

archie and mehitabel (1950s) musical ("back-alley opera:" “In the 1950s, Archy's texts were set to music and performed by an all-star cast, which included Carol Channing, John Carradine, and Edie Bracken. Comedian Mel Brooks assisted Joe Darion in writing the script…, which opened off-Broadway…. Two decades later, this musical was reborn as the animated film shinbone alley , directed by John D. Wilson” (Gordon 130).

Arenas, Reinaldo.   The Assault (1990). Trans. From the Cuban by Andrew
Hurley. New York: Penguin, 1994. " Reinaldo Arenas was born in Holguin, Cuba, in 1943, and left for the United States in 1980. The Assault is the final volume of a series of five novels that constitute what he called his "secret history of Cuba." It has been called 'a harrowing, and at the time boldly entertaining, Kafka-esque picture of a dehumanized people living in a world where…a cockroach hunt makes for a national holiday. Narrated by a hate-filled government torturer who has become an agent for the Bureau of Counterwhispering, The Assault follows his travel through a blackly humorous shadowland as he winnows out whisperers, sexual deviants, and dissidents of every sort--until memory has been banished and spoken language has been nearly forgotten' (Cover) " (Copeland appROACHES note 14).

Aristophanes. "Peace" (421 B. C.). " The earliest use of the cockroach (dung beetle) is found in the opening scene of Aristophanes' comedy Peace , first produced in 422 B. C. A number of "Aristophanes' comedies include animal choruses" and animals and insects figure in Greek Old Comedy, generally as chorus, but the opening of Peace is, according to Davies and Kathirithamby…, the only cockroach "scene composed in Greek (or indeed in any nation's) drama" (11). Actually that probably held true until the Egyptian Al Hakim's The Fate of a Cockroach , the Polish Glowacki's Hunting Cockroaches , and the Indonesian Riantiarno's The Cockroach Opera in the twentieth-century.

        "The human hero of Peace is not a god or demi-god but the farmer Tygaeus, determined to save the country from the ravages of the Peloponnesian War. To do so he must scale Olympus and unearth the goddess Peace from the pit in which War had buried her. The essential clue is in Tygaeus' mode of ascent: he "flies up to Zeus' palace" on the back of a man-sized cockroach he has brought home from Mt. Etna (Davies 11). According to Davies Etna had been famed "from the first third of the 5th century onwards" for its enormous cockroaches. Cockroaches became, in fact, symbols of the volcano (Davies 86-87), suggesting that the creature had long been associated with the Earth's inner and often violent powers, an association explored in the contemporary novel The Hephestus Plague by Thomas Page [and in the movie, Bug, based on Page's horror novel]. Most often in satyr plays and in Attic comedy in general, it is the roach's love of dung that occassions laughter, but the roach's role in Peace is relatively serious. Often indifferent even to the fates of major human characters in his plays Aristophanes "is careful to tell us of the beetle's happy fate: like Pegasus he will carry the thunderbolts of Zeus (l. 722) and, thanks to Ganymede, a steady supply of food (ll. 723ff) is assured" him (Davies 12)" (Copeland 1993 232).

Atkinson, Laura. La Cucaracha; The Little Clay Cockroach (1968) .
Albuquerque, NM: Old Town School, 1968.

Atxaga, Bernardo.  Obabakoak.  Trans from the Basque by Margaret Jill Costa.
        New York: Pantheon, 1992.  "Hunting has always seemed to me a cruel pastime and my habit of giving names to animals--something I've done ever since I was a child--prevents me from ever doing any harm to any creature, however repellent.  Imagine, for example, that you have a cockroach living in your house and one day it occurs to you to christen that cockroach Jose Maria, and then it's Jose Maria this and Jose Maria that, and very soon the creature becomes a sort of small black person who may turn out to be timid or irritable or even a little conceited.  And obviously in that situation you wouldn't dream of putting poison around the house.  Well, you might consider it as an option but no more often than you would for any other friend."  (quoted in Schweid 156-157)

“The Autobiography of Alexander Fever” an anonymous on-line story in process.  The narrator, whose work was discovered on a micro-chip in New York City,is a cockroach: “The idea that a mere insect could be the author of such a work has been widely debated in both literary and scientific circles” http://www.los.org/roach/CR1.html  

Avalos, Cecilia.  La Cucaracha Correlona/The Cockroach from Redona.  Trans.
By Scholastic Inc., 1992.

Index

B

Bad Mojo.1996 Pulse Entertainment CD-Rom. An adult adventure game that "takes you in a new direction entirely--into the grungy, vibrant, and dangerous world of a cockroach….the hero's predicament here recalls Gregor Samsa's transformation into a giant beetle in Franz Kafka's story 'The Metamorphosis.' The resemblance doesn't seem to be accidental: the main character here is the almost-anagrammatic Roger Samms" (CNET review 7/7/96). Samms lives "in Eddie's Bar, a waterfront dive. But you [he is] are a special roach, endowed with human cunning. Objective: survival, transformation--and lunch," wrote James Leileks, a staffer for Newhouse News Service in the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1996. One should add that Samms was once a human scientist who developed pesticides. An ancient Mexican locket transforms him into a cockroach and, as the game unwinds, Samms faces death by means of his own inventions. He is further transformed as roaches he encounters during "the game" attempt to help him survive. Lileks concludes his review by mentioning that the game "tells a story in a way no one has tried since Kafka [OH, YEAH?!], and does it with wit and skill. It's not for those with a hair-trigger gorge. And be warned that after five minutes of play, you will begin to feel sympathy with cockroaches. After 10 minutes you're thinking like one."

Ballentine, Bill.  Nobody Loves a Cockroach.  Boston: Little, Brown, 1968.
        Nonfiction.

Bailey, Dale.  "Cockroach."  Fantasy & Science Fiction95(December 1998): 38ff.

Baille, Allan.  "Taste of Cockroach" (1973).  Taste of Cockroach and Other
Stories.  Ed. John Griffin and Warwick Goodenough.  Australian
Association for the Te aching of English, 1974.  7-13.  Baille, a journalist and writer, moved to Melbourne from Scotland in 1950 when he was seven.  He has since traveled and worked in Britain, Europe, Southern Asia and Central America; and since the early seventies has worked in Sydney.  He has won several prizes for his short stories and has published a novel set in Laos (1974).
In a short story, “The Taste of Cockroach,” the Australian Alllan Baillie, whose assignments as a journalist have taken him to Southern Asia, narrates an exchange between two colonials in Laos in 1973 that introduces another universal role: the cockroach as food.  The American traveler embraces the culture, urging his reluctant French companion to try “a cooked and curried [cockroach] crescent.” When the Frenchman recoils, the American argues, “'But the Lao eat them like sweets….Have you ever tasted cockroach?'”  The American's naiveté is revealed when the other man explains that during the war he was isolated and starving in Laos, and survived by eating anything, even the abundant indigenous cockroaches.

Barr, Nevada. Hunting Season (2002).  Barr's National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon recalls having acted, twenty years earlier in New York City, in “ a ramshackle, roach-infested theater near the Port Authority Bus Terminal” (148).  Later in the novel, the wife of one of the locals implicated in the murder Anna will solve, comes out of the rain complaining “'I must look like a drowned rat ….Can't keep big hair dry on a day like this.  Mine must be flat as a squashed cockroach…'” (177).

Barthelme, Donald.  “Cortez and Montezuma.” Notebook.

~Baskin, Leonard.  “Cockroach.” Woodcut.  Diptera: A Book of Flies and Other Insects.  Northampton, Massachusetts: Gehenna Press, 1983.  30 copies printed.  In an interview with Lisa Baskin, the artist's widow (Feb. 15, 2002), in their home in Leeds, Massachusetts, I was able to view the studies that preceded the selection of the final image used in the book.  Baskin, who founded the Gehenna Press, printed the original run hi mself.  It typifies his many insect studies, quite distinct from the images of humans that have created his reputation among critics and art historians.  The insects are strong yet delicate, detailed and accurate, viewed with appreciation and wonder, wher eas his humans strike the viewer as “corrupt,” “bloated,” and viewed with “sardonic humor” (Columbia Encyclopedia; The Oxford Dictionary of Art describes his humans as “injured and brutalized,” “alone, naked, and defenseless”).  While the themes of Baskin's human studies may be “dominated by…death and spiritual decay” which explode any remaining delusions of optimism and progress” (Oxford), his insect and animal images (many done in collaboration with Ted Hughes' insect and animal poems) speak for the contin uity and dependable processes of nature.  If his human “figures [often have] a superficial likeness to anatomical charts,” essentially flayed by the artist's vision, his animals and insects are lifelike and full of living.   A softer image of the cockroach, done earlier to illustrate his first wife, Esther Baskin's Creatures of Darkness (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), may be seen on The New York Public Library's website:  (urbanneighbors.nypl.org/unwelcome/ref2.html <http://urbanneighbors.nypl.org/unwelcome/ref2.html>). That he meant these images to be positive and instructive to human viewers is clear in the epigraph he chose for Horned Beetles and Other Insects (Gehenna Press, 1958):
If we could imagine the male Chalcosoma [horned beetle] , with its polished bronze coat of mail and its vast horns, magnified to the size of a horse of even of a dog, it would be one of the most imposing animals in the world. - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man .

Baum, Frank. In the Oz books "Academic authority is represented by Mr. H. M. Woogle-Bug, T. E., a huge beetle (possibly a cockroach to judge by the illustrations). His initials stand for Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated. The Woogle-Bug became trapped under a microscope in a classroom and grew to human size; before his escape, he absorbed a great deal of knowledge. Like some professors he is extremely vain of his learning and makes terrible puns. Presently the Woogle-Bug founds a College of Athletics where students get instant education by taking pills, and can thus devote all their time to sports" (Lurie “Oddness“22).

The Beetle . 1919 silent film directed by Alexander Butler. See entry for Marsh,
Richard. The Beetle (1897).

Bejan, Nancy N.  Aunt Cockroach.  Monterey, CA: Monterey Pacific, 1998.

Belpre, Pura.  Perez y Martina: A Puerto Rican Folktale.  Ill. by Carlos Sanchez.
New York: Penguin, 1991.  Juvenile fiction.

Bersen, Dolores.  The Adventures of Clyde Cockroach.  DUB Publishing,
        1994.  Preschool.

Bingo Crosbiana 1936 Cal Dalton and Sander Wacker.  Warner Bros. animated
Cartoon (Leskosky 60).

Billy Bob the Texas Cowboy Cockroach.  A popular pin that can be purchased
on-line: ww.cowboycockroach.com/

Bird, Isabella L.  Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands (1890).  Used as a source for cockroach voyage encounters in Dan Simmons's novel Fires of Eden (1994).
Blair, Al.  Cockroach Crawl.  Northcountry Publishing, 1990.

"The Blue Cockroach" (1921).  Cf. Herron-Allen.

Boniface, William.  Mystery in Bugtown (1997).  Ill. Jim Harris.  Denver, CO:
        Accord, 1998. Juvenile fiction.  In a tale that claims equal justice for all, the cockroach, an unpopular and disreputable member of the community is the victim of an attempted murder.  The pe rpetrator is hunted down and brought to justice with as much zeal as if the victim were a venerated citizen, offering young readers a good lesson in democratic citizenry.  Much of the charm of the book lies in its illustrations, especially in the animated rolly-polly eyes of the attempted murder victim which have to be seen to be appreciated.

~Boscarino, Richard. "…the artist who created the medium [and the name] of Roachart. He poses dead cockroaches in lifelike backdrops equipped with tiny props (among his tableaux are a beauty parlor, a sales counter at Bloomingdale's, a public restroom, a bowling alley, a diner, and a reenacted Last Supper, among others). These little dioramas sell for between $500 and $900 and have inspired a line of greeting cards. He buys most of his cockroaches already dead from a biological supply company rather than collect them himself. He also makes traditional jewelry and regards roachart as just a sideline. Among other things, it is labor intensive--his diner diorama required 100 hours to create. Boscarino once aspired to become an entomologist but a summer job at Princeton University pinning specimens convinced him that it was not the profession for him " (Berenbaum 340).

Breathed, Burke. The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos . Boston: Little,
Brown, 1989. Cartoon strip " Breathed's cockroach Milquetoast is a crucial member of the communities of both Bloom County and Outland . Breathed responded to an interview question about Binkley becoming so empathetic toward other life forms that he not only becomes a vegetarian but ends up hanging from trees to avoid stepping on bugs:

He was asking the same kind of questions I was asking [Breathed ex-
plained]. Why is the life of an elephant any more precious that the life
of a cockroach? And by what means do you measure such things: in-
telligence? size? At the time, I saw no alternative but to be a purist--
thinking that if you're going to play the game at all, you've got to go all
the way. (Pacelle 11)

________.  Politically, Fashionably, and Aerodynamically Incorrect: The
        First   Outland Collection.  Boston: Little, Brown, 1992. Cartoon strip.

Breytenbach, Breyten. Johnny Cockroach (A Lament for Our Times) . South African play first presented at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in June 1999. One reviewer notes that the play " captures some of the century's complexities through the use of a wide range of theatrical disciplines. Combining song, dance, physical theatre and music--orchestral and alternative Afrikaner rock--the dreamers and revolutionaries get one more chance to justify their actions before the birth of the new millennium….before a 'Bench' of three women who are the wives, mothers, sisters and lovers of all those who changed the world and created a 'new man.' The drama takes place in the tortured, ironic presence of Johnny Cockroach, the oldest form of life and one that will outlive us all " ("A Collage of Meaning in Johnny Cockroach" http://www.jol.co.za/june99/festival17.htm) -- link not working
Another reviewer explains that " The argument is based on the troubles that tore Africa apart, " although it extends as well " to Kosovo,…World War Two's holocaust, and other such horrific moments in history ," confronting " issues that have been swept under the carpet and forgotten for the sake of reconciliation, but still burn deep in the hearts of some. " She finds the play uncomfortable but points out that " it maintains an aspect of beauty …."
        " While observing the action on stage, Johnny Cockroach --who exists in both male and female form--is also subject to an internal struggle to separate the male and the female aspects in the hope of death. The power of life and death can only be granted by 'the Voice', and she relentlessly withholds [it] from the cockroach--'sometimes one is deprived even of the consolation of death', says Johnny ." (Pearman)

Bug . Jeannot Szwarc. Fox 1975 (based on Thomas Page's The Haephestus
Plague ). " The city of Riverside is threatened with destruction after a massive earth tremor unleashes a super-race of 10-inch mega-cockroaches that belch fire, eat raw meat, and are virtually impervious to Raid. Produced by gimmick-loving William Castle, who wanted to install wind-shield-wiper-like devic, under theatre seats that would brush against the patrons' feet as the cockroaches crawled across the screen; unfortunately, the idea was squashed flat " ( VideoHound's Complete Guide to Cult Flicks and Trash Pics 58).
Mertins comes much closer to the truth about this film, calling it an important film, featuring "large, intelligent cockroaches" and including it on his list of films in which arthropods--here roaches--are of "significant importance" and are presented "with positive or at least neutral, realistic images" (87). Indeed they become the film's main and most interesting protagonists--uncannily so. Mechling's description is also misleading as he sees the cockroaches representing "something evil,…neither religion or science…[a] threat from the bowels of the earth" (131). Instead, as in Page's novel, the insects are merely natural beings misplaced by the earthquake and attempting to survive. It is the scientist who is the evil force, perpetuating the lives of creatures who would otherwise have succumbed to an alien environment. He is, ultimately, consumed by his own meddling with nature.

Bug Vaudeville.  1921.  Windsor McKay  animated cartoon (Leskosky 60).

Bunting, Eve.  We Were There: A Nativity Story.
        A snake, scorpion, toad, bat, cockroach, spider, and rat tell how they witnessed the birth of the Christ Child.  Preschool-grade 3.

~Burke, Mary.  “Seat of Knowledge.”  2000.  The Shimer College submission to Chicago's outdoor furniture exhibit, Burke's piece is painted on an actual chair and ottoman which are enhanced with the artist's “naturalistic imagery of fruit and leaves” as well as with more “scholarly references.”  These include allusions to “authors in the Shimer curriculum.” One of these, “referring to Franz Kafka's famous cockroach of The Metamorphosis,” provided the artist with her first experience of “painting a cockroach!” Burke, who exhibits widely, is an adjunct member of the Shimer faculty. (http://www.shimer.edu/news/05112001.htm)

Burroughs, William.  Exterminator.  New York: Penguin, 1979.  The titular story introduces William Lee who works for A. J. Cohen Exterminators.  His customers are reluctant to admit to their roach problems: Mrs. Murphy claims hers come up "'from those Jews downstairs'" before ac knowledging "'Sure and an Irish cockroach is as bad as another.'"  She's convinced the white powder used by the city exterminators "'draws roaches the way whisky draws a priest.'"  Using pyrethrum, Lee blows "the precious yellow powder" into "a brown crac k by the kitchen sink."  In short order cockroaches "stream" on stage "as if they had heard the last trumpet… and flop in convulsions on the floor."  Their agony delights Mrs. Murphy who prevents Lee from delivering "the coup de grace."  After relishing in t heir deaths, she "sweeps up a dustpanful" to throw "into the wood stove" and then heats water to make Lee a cup of tea.

________. Naked Lunch (1959).  New York: Grove Press, 1966.  Novel.

Byler, Stephen Raleigh. “Roaches.” Searching for Intruders: A Novel in Stories .
        New York: William Morrow, 2001.
“The first five full-length stories…(each is bracketed by a shorter, related vignette) are so confident and ruefully funny that you'll put your doubts in your hat for a while. Byler's laconic narrator is Wilson Hues, a decent if luckless guy from Reading, Pa…. The emotional core of these five stories is Wilson's tangled relationship with Melody Henderson…. These stories skip around in time, and we meet Melody as Wilson's college girlfriend, his wife and his ex-wife. Bound together, they'd make a fine little book: the Melody stories.
        “Among the best of these Melody stories are 'Roaches' and 'Beauty Queen.' In the first Wilson and Melody are crammed unhappily into a two-room apartment in Manhattan, and they both know that their four-year marriage is coming to an end. They're tired and broke and have come to hate the city; the roaches that have infested their apartment come to feel like a physical manifestation of their emotional state. They both feel unambiguously dirty . Byler's take on a marriage in extremis is subtle and expert; so is his grasp of the skittery details. When Wilson flips on the kitchen light late one night, hundreads of roaches scatter, yet some don't: 'One monster had its face buried in a maki roll I had bought from the sushi place up the street. It had its legs braced behind it trying to get deeper in.'” (Garner 6)

Index

C

Campbell, Alice.  ;The Cockroach Sings (1946).  London: Collins "Crime Club
Detective Story," 1946.

Cannon, Janelle.  Crickwing (2000). San Diego, New York, and London:

You might remember STELLALUNA and VERDI from Chinaberry catalogs past. Janelle Cannon, their author and illustrator, makes a habit of choosing creatures that normally get a bad rep (in the case of the aforementioned, they were a fruit bat and a python) and then creating a juicy and engaging story featuring them as the main characters. Each of these books was acclaimed…. The underdog quality of the characters, combined with Cannon's truly beautiful illustrations, added up to books that kids just eat up.

"So, with CRICKWING Jannell Cannon has outdone herself by choosing the underdog of all underdogs, because Crickwing is a cockroach with a crooked wing. (Talk about creatures with bad reps! But thank heavens he lives below the forest canopy instead of in someone's kitchen.) This is a story about cockroach-as-artist with a flair for sculpture. And as it turns out, animals in the forest just won't stop picking on him. Now, as is commonly the case when someone is picked on, that someone often turns to those smaller--and starts picking on them. In this case, Crickwing turns to leaf-cutter ants who are eventually…threatened by ferocious army ants,"

Capitol Critters.  “[A] short-lived TV series starring roaches, sewer rats, and other unwanted animal inhabitants of the White House” (Gordon 124). Perhaps it's time for reissuing? Excellent web site.

Caraher, Kim.  The Cockroach Cup.
        Everyone is looking for a top cockroach who can win the Cockroach Cup.  When Cool scuttles out into the torchlight it seems that he-or she-is obviously a champion.  Cup day brings lots of surprises.

Cardwell, Carolyn, ed.  ODES to a Cockroach, Vol. I.  Hieroglyphics Press, 1984.

_________. ODES to a Cockroach, Vol. II.  Hieroglyphics Press, 1985.

Carter, Vincent.  "A Cockroach Named Biko" (1996).  On-line story (http://students.depaul.edu/~ocanter/roach.html) -- unable to locate

Castillo, Ana.  "Christmas Story of the Golden Cockroach."  A Gathering of
Flowers: Stories About Being Young in America.  New York: Harper
Keypoint, 1990.  "I suspect Castillo's story was inspired at least in part by Poe's 'The Gold Bug,'  'Poe's only effort to use an existing folk legend in his own fiction' (D aniel Hoffmann, Poe [Anchor, 1972], 122).  A golden beetle seems to be mistaken by the story's protagonist, Legrand, for real gold, and does in fact lead him to the buried treasure of Captain Kidd on the South Carolina coast.  Castillo's plot suggests suc h treasures are, for Mexican-Americans, more memories of the rain forests of their native land [where golden cockroaches do exist] than promises from their adopted one" (Copeland appROACHES note 17).
The first time the young mother who narrates the story sees a golden cockroach, she associates it with her gold wedding band….the golden roach…[had originally been] discovered in the jungle and surviv[es] on a diet of maize. …maize…, particularly among the indigenous peoples of the American Southwest and Mexico, [is] associated with female principles of procreation and growth which evolve from the …archaic chthonic powers. She refers to the roach as a 'mini-king in some ancient, sacred ritual.'
“But perhaps most important is the cockroach's source-the jungle, the rainforest where the chthonic powers still reign/rain. Urban cockroaches, as fascinating-beautiful-successful as they are, are only a dim reflection of their thousands of wild kin. One in twenty thousand, Castillo's narrator discovers, is gold. And, of course, the gold specimens are valued [in a capitalist society] only for the money they bring from the pawnbroker….” (Copeland 1993 239)
Although not connected with this story, "The Golden Cockroach," a figure that appears in a vision recorded in Marcia Lauck's At the Pool of Wonder: Dreams and Visions of an Awakening Humanity, are relevant: "'At our feet, in the center of this sacred circle is a shimmering golden roach….  This is a good omen for the future.  The insect, seemingly lit from within, gro ws in luminosity and size until it becomes the dream.  As I come back to waking, I feel it at the shoreline of human consciousness, embedded in the archetypal ground.'"  Joanne Lauck explains that "The pairing of gold, that enduring essence that symbolizes the soul, with the ancient insect that has both preceded and accompanied us on our evolutionary journey signifies that some great work is underway--a deep reconciliation and healing called forth from the primordial wisdom that is held in the heart of cre ation…..Myths the world over teach that the seed of renewal is always to be found in something humble, in what has been despised and rejected.  What quality, what energies does the golden cockroach bring to a world that no longer knows its true name?"  (309-310).  These two observations show how the story may respond from an ecofeminist reading.

Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay . New York:
        Random House, 2000. “In 1939 the American comic book, like the beavers and cockroaches of prehistory, were larger and, in its cumbersome way, more splendid than its modern descendant” (74). Instead of an imaginary friend, Kavalier's son Tommy creates a super-hero alter-ego, the Bug (503,509, 516, 625).
The Bug was the name of his costumed crime fighting alter ego, who had appeared one morning when Tommy was in first grade, and whose adventures and increasingly involved mythology he had privately been chronicling in his mind ever since. He had drawn several thick volumes' worth of Bug stories, although his artistic ability was incommensurate with the vivid scope of his mental imagery….The Bug was a bug, an actual insect-a scarab beetle, in his current version-who had been caught, along with a human baby, in the blast from an atomic explosion. Somehow-Tommy was vague on this point-their natures had been mingled, and now the beetle's mind and spirit, armed with his beetle hardness and proportionate beetle strength, inhabited the 4-foot-high body of a human boy who sat in the third row of Mr. Landauer's class, under a bust of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sometimes he could avail himself, again rather vaguely, of the characteristic abilities-flight, stinging, silk-spinning-of other varieties of bug. (503)
Though the Bug isn't specifically a cockroach, the rich and suggestive context of the novel suggests the influence of Kafka's Metamorphosis (Kafka's insect isn't clearly a cockroach either, after all). Related themes and Kavalier's genesis in Prague support the allusion. Yet Chabon does little with either the allusion or Tommy's Bug-self. This is particularly puzzling because so much of the later part of the novel deals with the impact of comic books on kids. One wonders if Tommy and Bug are being saved for a sequel?

~Chalmers, Catherine.  “Infestation,” Roaches (1997-1999).  “ Chalmers reputation was largely made by Food Chain (1994-96),…a series of photographs…using insects, arachnids, and reptiles…to represent what happens in nature.”  In 1997, the photographer started
Concentrating on cockroaches, which she buys in bulk and cages in her apartment… .  The science-experiment air of the earlier work is replaced by a goofily contextual setting: a doll house.  The common domestic cockroach no longer exists in nature, according to Chalmers.  Its habitat is the city….Roaches play  on our fears of the disgusting brown bugs.  Looking larger than life in their miniature settings, the roaches make themselves comfortable in a stand-in for our own homes.  (Frederickson)

________.  “Imposters.”  Roaches (1997-1999).  Chalmers' second roach series places the roaches “ in an unnatural setting for them: flowers.  Painting and flocking her roaches to look like ladybugs and other benign-seeming insects, Chalmers tries to warm our hearts to the creatures.”  Frederickson finds this “cute work,” but feels it “ lacks the strange mix of horror and banality that informs her earlier, nastier stuff.”  However, a press release counters that these “highly colour-saturated…nature” photographs probe our phobic reactions to roaches, a pr obe driven still deeper by Chalmers third roach series.

________.  “Executions.” Roaches (1997-1999).  This third series “shows stark, black and white images of roaches, drowned, hanged, burnt and electrocuted” (www.art_online.org/percymiller/pressrelease/chalmers.html - link no longer working)  As Isle observes, “All the various ways… we humans are fond of executing one another.”  Although, as English art critic Will Cohu noted, Chalmers' “'starting point seems to be humor and compassion… and that sets her apart from the pig-in-blue-formaldehyde school of conceptual artists,'” she does chill the roaches she then decorates and poses.  Chalmers explains, “ 'Roaches is more about specific feelings that we have toward certain types of animals-the aggression and violence and fear.  We kill one, we kill twenty, we kill a hundred, but we never get them under control.'”  Isle  feels that it is about “Control.  We like to have nature under control.”  Her exposure of that drive and of the “'unhing[ing] from the natural world'” and our “'desire to be out of the food chain'” that fuels it is what finally labels Chalmers as an ecofeminist “(Isle 4).

________.  “Hello, Columbus.”  The New York Times Magazine
        19 September 1999:87.  “When Christopher Columbus made landfall…he set in motion a vast ecological transformation….These art works… depict one of the shock troops of the European invasion, the cockroach, fastening upon the bounty of the New World, represented by the tomato.  The insect shown in these photographs, painted with the image that festooned Columbus's sails, did so well in its new home that it is now called the American cockroach.”  It is significant that Christianity Today Magazine ( http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1999/147/13.0.html ) felt it necessary to comment on this “revisionist history.”  
Three smallish photographs form a vertical series on the page.  In the first, several cockroaches are clambering on and around a tomato.  In the second frame, the insides of the tomato have been exposed bit by bit by the busy cockroaches.  In the third frame, much of the tomato is gone, and what remains is a mushy pulp swarming with cockroaches.  Turn the page, thinking perhaps to find another work of art, and you encounter a striking two-page spread-the centerfold of this whole issue, as it were-showing the ravaged tomato and the voracious roaches in extreme close-up.  Oh yes, and one more detail: the cockroaches are painted white with red crosses (as in the Cross, the sign of Jesus) on their backs.
The article, entitled “Cockroaches for Jesus,” ends: “History such as the New York Times Magazine 's millennium special purveys cartoon history, as simplistic and self-righteous…as the jingoistic stuff that many of us were raised with….  Resist it.  Reject it.  Make fun of it.  And will somebody please bring the Raid. ”  I'd say Chalmers' satire, as pointed as is much satiric cockroach literature, has hit its mark!

 Chast, Roz.  "Gregor's Further Adventures."  Parallel Universes: an
Assortment of Cartoons.New York: Harper & Row, 1984.  Cartoon which, like Smiley's "My Life as a Bug," emphasizes how Gregor's life improves once he is out of the family apartment and free of the family.

Chong, Benildas.  "Last Yamse."  Tales of the Living, Tales of the Dead.
Singapore: Landmark Books, 1990.  Short story.

Christopher, Itah Sadie.  Ill. Roy Condy.  Please Clean Up Your Room.  Buffalo,
New York: Firefly Books, 1996.

Chung, Frances.  Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple: Poems.  Hanover, NH:
Wesleyan University/UP of New England, 2001.  "'Yo vivo en el barrio Chino,' Frances Chung announces in the opening line of her posthumous (and first) collection….Chung, who grew up on the border between New York City's Chinatown and Little Italy, died in 1990 at the age of 40, leaving behind assorted manuscripts….This collection's editor, Walter K. Lew, has done an admirable job of drawing them together….This is a world of 'shrimp gray days' in which Chung asks, 'Where is the cockroach who left/ its footprint on my bowl? ' Chung owes much to William Carlos Williams; many of her poems are compact and oddly moving narratives that give voice to those who are between cultures " (Hainey), exactly those voices most frequently accompanied by the cockroach voice or presence in literature.

Cisneros, Sandra.  Bien Pretty.  In this novel, Flavio Munguin is an exterminator who “represents the indigenous creativity and cultural authenticity of the barrio.” Hired by Lupe, who is attracted by the sign on the side of Flavio's truck (La Cucaracha apachurrada-the squished cockroach), he becomes the model for her paintings of the barrio and its people (Mullen).

Cockroach.  EPIC/SONY Records: Bruno Rave and Steve West.

"Cockroach" an on-line anonymous poem with a cockroach speaker:

I know I'm a cockroach
It's what I was born
I might have preferred
To be piglet or faun

But exactly like you
wasn't given a voice
had to be what I am
without vestige of choice

It's not really me
to be people's pet hate
to spend my days dodging
the boot and the bait

So reach for the Bayson
but think on it too
what if you'd been a cockroach
and I had been you?

Cockroach Candies.  A German punk rock group(www.cockroachcandies.de/ - link no longer working)

Cockroach Hotel.  An Independent Film Production.  Director, Nicholas von
Sternberg.  In this horror film, "four teenagers…are joyriding… when an empty tank of gas brings them to a delapidated hotel….Forced to stay for the night, Barbara's nightmare begins.  The lonely, eccentric proprietor has a severe bug problem--and no one can call out--all the phone lines are down!
…Set in 1958 rural Texas, it weaves all the nostalgia of the ever-popular '50ies era with the creepy-crawly chills of the horror movie genre" (www.surfview.com/crhotel.htm - link no longer working)

Cockroach Party! Folktales to Sing, Dance & Act Out.  58 minutes.  Bellingham,
WA: Live Music Recordings, 1999.  Stories recorded include “Cockroach Party,” “ Grandfather Bear is Hungry,” “Elk and Wren,” “Ms. Cricket Looks for a Husband,” “Ms. Cricket Gets Married,” “Pickin' Peas,” and “The Teeny Weeny Bop.” (http://www.story-lovers.com/productsmacdonald.html)

Cockroach Run.  An internet game.

The Cockroach that Ate Cincinnati.  1981. Directed by Michael McNamara.  Inspired by a novelty song of the same name recorded by Rose and the Arrangement in 1974.  The “song describes a fictitious cockroach movie monster through the eyes of a self-confessed horror film junkie” (Gordon 131).  The film is about drugs, rebellion, and the search for integrity with obvious ties to
Burroughs and films based on his novels although the direct source is Alan Williams' The Cockroach Trilogy.  "Based on Alan Williams's innovative theatre pieces, The Cockroach Trilogy, Michael McNamara's directorial debut, is an ultra-strange examination of one man's meditations on life and the universe as he descends into madness… .Williams plays 'The Captain,' a character that a bland, middle-class filmaking team happen upon and decide to make a film about" (Hays).  The film was nominated for two Genie Awards and a limited edition video-digital quality is available (www.interlog.com/~qwest/cockroach/ - link no longer working).

Cockroach! An EZINE for Poor and Working Class People.  Edited by Robert
Malecki.

Cocky Cockroach. Paul Terry.  1932.  Terrrytoons animated cartoon (Leskosky
60).  “boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl plot (this time to a spider)” (Gordon
123)

Cole, Joanna.  Cockroaches.  An early novel by the prolific author of The Magic Schoolbus series.

Colingoh.  Living in Singapore and working as a cartoonist since 1988, Coligoh draws cockroaches because “they work…at a really great satirical level-sharp, symbolic and simple.”  Nevertheless, his editors at Singapore's The New Paper have limited the number of his cockroach strips.  In a cartoon about this censorship, one of his cockroaches questions why they would do that.  The other responds that it must be because “there was a bland sameness to our appearance,” to which the first responds, “Like I said, we cockroaches are deeply symbolic…” (http://www.colingoh.com/cockroaches.htm).   

Communications from a Cockroach:archy and the underside (2001)-an original 75 minute puppetry adaptation of Don Marquis's Archy and Mehitabel, adapted and directed by Ralph Lee, and presented first in the parks of New York City, June-Sept, 2001, by the Mettawee River Theatre Company and The Shakespeare Project.  A performance was included in The New World Theatre [Amherst, Massachustts] annual KO Festival 15 July 2001 (on the lawn of the Amherst Colle ge Observatory.

Company, Flavia.  Not You, Not I, Not Anyone. [Barcelona: ediciones 62, 1998].
Translated from the Catalan by Richard Sweid and Flavia Company.
1997.
I with a hand.  They had a hard shell, shiny and slippery.  E. wanted to put them in her mouth and squeeze them between her tongue and her palate until they let go of that white juice that comes out when they are squashed.  She didn't do it because, in that moment, she didn't want to be left without a cockroach.
A.:  "Yes, I'll ask D. to make them take their clothes off and… "--in that precise moment of thinking of his wife and her lover without clothes, A.'s cockroaches, which had begun to enthusiastically go up and down inside E., suddenly went back to the eyes and heart of A. without any warning.
E.:  "What happened to you?  What Happened?"--disappointment, she knew that now neither the tongue nor the palate would serve for anything.
A.:  "Is it really so important now?" he answered, impatiently.  He was there without clothes on as if he were in front of the doctors who had examined him in the military. (quoted in Schweid 56, 59-60)

Conant, Susan.  Ruffly Speaking.  New York: Bantam, 1994.  An episode in this volume of the popular dog mystery series recounts the use of the cockroach in a summer program for troubled youth:
        "Ivan's latest prank in the program, though one Leah told me about in the car, involved Matthew himself.  As I've mentioned, Matthew was teaching a course--or maybe a seminar, workshop, or module--about urban flora and faun a, and one of the fauna had, indeed, turned out to be a cockroach, which, as Matthew had explained to me, was a zoologically fascinating insect of ancient and noble lineage.  The topic put Matthew in an unusually talkative mood, and he became outright ani m ated as he went on about it.  I wasn't very responsive, but Steve, who was there, too, caught Matthew's contagious enthusiasm, and the two had a long, technical discussion about evolution and adaptation that almost sent me rushing to call an exterminator.
        "Steve commented afterward on what a bright kid Matthew was.  I had to agree but couldn't resist adding that as companion animals Border Collies were a few million evolutionary steps ahead of roaches, and how would Steve like it if his clients started sho wing up with little portable kennels crawling with vermin for him to spay and neuter?  Steve said that he, like every other veterinarian, would be happy to find a new area into which he could expand his practice, and he claimed to welcome the challenge of mastering microsurgical techniques.  Further more, Steve said, neutering roaches couldn't be any worse than de-scenting skunks.
        "But back to Matthew.  The Avon School Summer Program followed a hands-on, learn-by-doing approach.  Consequently, instead of just reading about roaches and listening to Matthew lecture about them, his students watched them in the flesh, if  flesh is the right word for what insects have.  In the shell.  In the shell surrounding some revolting mess of squishy, roachy slime.  Whateve r.  The point is that Matthew's roaches lived in some sort of dry aquarium in the AHSP science lab, or they did until Ivan liberated them." (98-99)

"'…he had this great explanation about how they'd been studying the cockroach's beautiful adaptation to varied natural environments--they don't have to keep evolving, basically, because they're perfectly adapted now--but how were you supposed to observe it when the roaches were trapped in a glass box?'
        "'The director said that?'
        "'Not really.  Matthew made Ivan sit down and work out how fast roaches reproduce so Ivan would understand the quote significance of his act unquote, and the director kept wringing his hands and wondering about whether to spray now or wait and see what happened….'" (100)

Coonskin.  1975 animated cartoon by Mark Kausler featuring Malcolm the Cockroach, “an endearing chap” inspired by the cockroaches in George Harriman's Krazy Kat (Gordon 122).

Corn, Alfred. “Water: City Wildlife and Greenery.”  In Laure-Anne Bosselaar, ed.
Urban Nature: Poems About Wildlife in the City.  Minneapolis: Milkweed
Editions, 2000: 30-31.
        The pests include large foraging rats,
A population of roaches always on the point
Of doubling into infinity, any number
Of mice, and, in summer, plagues of flies,
Plus a number of mosquitoes.
There's a special problem of strays-
Ribby dogs and cats that ran wild
And live out the fate of any creature
Abandoned to the streets-cold, damp,
Hunger, begging, violence, early death.
Spring gives some relief to this sad business.

Cornwall, Patricia D.  Cruel & Unusual: A Novel.  New York: Charles Scribner's,
1993.  Two quotes from the popular mystery writer suggest the cockroach's association with the outsiders among humans, first with convicted murder Ronnie Joe Waddell, a Black man who awaits exectuion on death row.  He comments: "It is two weeks before Christmas.  Four days before nothing at all.  I lie on my iron bed staring at my dirty bare feet and the white toilet missing its seat, and when cockroaches crawl across the flo or I don't jump anymore.  I watch them, the same way they watch me" (Prologue xi).  The second is a comment made by a policeman staked out in a run-down neighborhood where a thirteen-year-old boy has been murdered and mutilated: " That corner right over there is a popular hang-out for drug drones.  They trade crack for cash and fade.  We catch the cockroaches, and two days later, they're on another corner doing the same thing" (39).

Count Cocky Cockroach-- a fine porcelain collectible doll created by Marie Osmond as part of her "interacting group of dolls entitled the 'Beauty Bug Ball' series" which began "'with the 'Queen Bee' issuing invitations to various and noble inhabitants of her bug kingdom to attend her annual 'Beauty Bug Ball.'"  It is to the point that the cockroach is among those issued invitations!  ( http://www.trishastemptations.com/description/048321.html - link no longer working)

Cousins, Steven.  Frankenbug. New York: Holiday House, 2000.  Part of many superb insects are joined and brought to life by young Adam Cricklestein, the hero aspiring-entomologist of this young adult novel.  Cousins got the idea from his daughter's homework assignment, “Design your own Insect.”   But Adam 's superbug, rather than a monster, turns out to be a marshmallow-loving vegetarian-granted with the speed and mobility of its cockroach legs!

Creepshow.  George Romero.  1982. "Romero and novelist/scriptwriter Stephen King pay tribute to E. C. Comics, the pulp horror comics of the 1950s that were hated by parents and teachers, and, on the plus side, were often grisly, grotesque, and morbidly humorous…..Best vignette deals with a phobia-ridden millionaire recluse besieged by swarms of cursed cockroaches.
“….Romero's direction cleverly mimics the narrative style of comic strips" (VideoHound's Complete Guide to Cult Flicks and Trash Pics 74).  Leonard Maltin comments: "King's five 'fantastic tales' of revenge and just deserts are transparent and heavy-handed….  The finale had hundreds of cockroaches bursting through the stomach of a man with an insect phobia" (244).  On the other hand, Roger Ebert describes this Stephen King film as "an anthology of human phobias,"  among which "being smothered by cockroaches" ranks high.  He comments: "Upson Pratt …the hero of the fifth story, is a compulsively neat and tidy man who lives in a hermetically sealed command center, much like Howard Hughes.  What could be more suitable than an invasion of his stronghold by cockroaches?"   Inspired by the E C comics ("Educational Comics") of the early 1950s, the story, according to Ebert, teaches that "it was quite unwise to assume that cockroaches would never decide to gang up and fight back" (140).
"…recent demand for strange and exotic insects comes from Hollywood, where film directors interested in particular effects often hire people to supply them with large numbers of exotic (or not so exotic) species.  These people are often credited in the movies as 'insect wranglers.'  Insect wranglers are not only responsible for providing insects but also manipulating them on the set.  This calls for some basic understanding of insect behavior… .  David Brody, of the American Museum of Natural History, traveled to Trinidad and other parts of the Caribbean to provide 20,000 cockroaches for the feature film Creepshow" (Berenbaum 336).
"As early as 1912 C. H. Turner used electric shock to train cockroaches [to solve a maze] in a laboratory experiment.  The same questionable technique was used by the special effects technician for the cockroach invasion in  Creepshow" (Lauck 83).
        Although it would be stretching it to call Pratt's cockroach punishers the protagonists of the piece, they are of enough importance to the plot and the "overall impact" to warrant the film being placed on Mertins' list of "Movies with entomological elements of significant importance"(85, 87), and I think the film supports seeing the cockroaches as conscious and purposeful-even Aristophanean!.

~Crumb, Robert.  "Metamorphosis."  Esquire Jul y 1994: 90-97.  From Introducing Kafka (Totem Books).  Comicbook retelling using Kafka's words.

"La Cucaracha."  Probably the most famous but certainly not the only cockroach-in-music piece, this familiar piece was “among the few Latin numbers” recognized by most Americans “before the first great wave of interest in Latin music in the 1920s” ( http://www.spaceagepop.com/latin.htm).  A traditional Mexican folk song, in its present form it comments on Pancho Villa's revolution in which la cucaracha was a code name for the  soldadera, female revolutionaries.  Since it has come to be associated with marijuana (a reefer “roach” is the butt end of a marijuana cigarette).

Cukovskiji, Kornej.  Tarnkanisce (“The Cockroach”). A Russian children's tale containing  satiric commentary on the Stalinist regime.Interestingly Osip Mandelstrom was arrested for writing a poem that depicted Stalin with “cockroach whiskers.”

D

D'Alpuget, Blanche.  White Eye .  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
An Australian novel about experiments on chimpanzees intended to halt the spread of a dread disease (White Eye).  The chief researcher, an archetypal mad scientist, actually plans to use the serum to halt human procreation.  As he returns to S ydney from Kalanga, the narrator explains that John Parker "found Sydney as obscene as every other big city: a bedlam of shops, cars, and swarms of people.  People.  People.  Cities reminded him of the London flea plague in the fifties.  His bedsheets had been peppered with fleas; on Sundays the minister held aloft the Bible and cried, 'Every swarming thing!  Every swarming thing is an abomination to the Lord!'  Parishioners were urged to cleanse their houses, literally and metaphorically.  Ha!  Look at wh a t forty years of progress have achieved, Parker thought.  Look at the insects now!  Tokyo: educated professionals sitting three hours a day in their motorcars in traffic jams.  Jakarta: a nightmare.  Bangkok: ditto.  London: a joke.  Los Angeles: a time b omb.  In Bogota children had turned into cockroaches, living in the sewers.  Africa was starving and swarming.  In Paris the level of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere was so high that woman with dyed hair who lingered at sidewalk cafes could suffer a change of color in the space of an hour.  And so on and on--a murrain of humans on every continent" (81).

Damnation Alley.  Jan-Michael Vincent  1977.  "Roger Zelazny's 1969 novel  Damnation Ally was filmed to much undeserved fanfare in 1977 with Jan Michael Vincent as Tanner.  Even the basic plot was detrimentally altered.  Instead of Hell [Tanner] leading a medical convoy across the nation to plague-ridden New England, we have this team of cliched cuties travelling to Albany, New York, for want of something be tter to do" (Meyers 100).
"What stands for irony and action here are cheap special effects… .When giant flesh-eating cockroaches attack,…the scenes are so poorly composed that it becomes obvious that most of the creatures are models pasted on rugs which are pulled across the floor with ropes, leaving the way open for the single funniest line of the picture.  Peppard gets on his C. B. and announces, 'The town's infested with killer cockroaches!'" (Meyers 101-102).
Mertins included it in his list of "movies with relatively minor entomological elements," mentioning only that it employs "large cockroaches [and] giant scorpions" (88).

Darin, Morgan.  "The War of the Coprophages."  X-Files episode  Fox  February
5, 1996.  Directed by Kim Manners.
 " 'War of the Coprophages,' (which I have seen no less than half a dozen times now, having shown it in each of my three Eng 102 appROACHES to literature classes), … doesn't obviously urge its audience to think like a cockroach.  There is, however, a central scene where Muldar , convinced that alien robotic roaches which are in fact extraordinarily sophisticated microcomputers (origin unknown) are abroad, picks up what turns out to be a strictly earthly roach and, staring into its eyes, murmurs, 'Welcome to planet Earth.'  Mean while, viewers are seeing Muldar through the roach's eyes (shades of The Fly!) and, if they're as astute as my students, catching the irony of Muldar's anthropocentric vision as well as the relevance of The Alien Empire  to the episode.  Its scientists are entomologist Bambi ('Her name is Bambi?') Berenbaum, undoubtedly a reference to real-life entomologist May R. Berenbaum (she of the Insect Fear Festival), and a Steven Hawkings-likerobotics genius, whose insect robots become attached to Muldar, who is clearly not ready to think about robots capable of liking a human.

"Dr. Bambi is, in fact, key to the episode.  She explains to a smitten Muldar that she loves insects, especially cockroaches, which are her specialty, because of their beauty and honesty.  'Honesty?' questions Muldar, apparently led from his search for the truth that is out there by a rush of testosterone.  Sure, Bambi replies calmly: 'Eat, sleep, defecate, procreate.  That's all that they do and all they pretend to do.  Of course, that's all t hat humans do, too, but they try to make more of it.'  She cuts right through the kind of bullshit that gives the episode its title.
"In addition to the allusion to dung, the episode is replete with allusions to other things roachy and literary without milking the by-now cliched connection to 'The Metamorphosis' that fuels the CD-ROM game  Bad Mojo….'War of the Coprophages' begins with an exterminator's monologue about the cockroach, stopped in mid-stream by the exterminator's death" (Copeland 1996 9-10).

A day in the Life of Rodney Roach.  An illustrated story available on Cockroach World, the Yuckiest Site on the Internet!  (http://www.nj.com/yucky/life/index.htm - link no longer working)

Dearborn, Tricia.  "Consider the Cockroach." (short story)  Social Alternatives 18(July 1999): 2 pp.

Deaver, Jeffrey (writing as William Jefferies).  Hell's Kitchen: A Location Scout Mystery. New York: Pocket Books, 2001.  John Pelham, film maker and location scout, visits the star of his Hell's Kitchen docudrama in the Women's Detention Center where she is being held for arson.  The torched building was her home and  the focus of Pelham's film:
They sat across from one another in a fluorescent-lit room.  A roach meandered slowly up the wall, past the corpses of his kin crushed to dry specks (59).
Much later in the novel, the actual arsonist, stopped by the police as he pumps gasoline into a gas can, manages to drench the ground with it.  The cops run: “ Sunny was on a dry patch of asphalt, though when he touched the flame to the flowing river of gasoline he leaped back fast, like a roach.  The fire was huge.  He grabbed the container and fled” (189).
        One 12 year old, Ismail, whose crack addicted mother and baby sister were burned out, attaches himself to Pelham.  Following him, Ismail turns up wh en Pelham confronts a local Hispanic gang-leader about breaking into his apartment and stealing the two final tapes of West of Eighth:
        Pelham squirmed into the gloomy opening of the alley.  The intruder was Ismail.
        “Yo, cuz,' the boy said, glancing uncertainly at the Latino….
        Ramirez glanced at him like he was a roach. (226)

________. The Stone Monkey. 2002.  Undocumented aliens Wa and his family share the crummy apartment off Canal Street in New York City with roaches who roam “the floor boldly…even [with] a diffuse room light bleeding in through the greasy windows” (122).  Later, about to enter the apartment, Amelia Sacks observes that

Garbage littered the alley way and Sacks knew the rooms here would be dark, probably infested with roaches and would undoubtedly stink.  Imagine…the Was risked death and imprisonment and endured the physical pain of their terrible journey just for the privilege of calling this filthy place their own. (212)

Diaz, Junot. Drown.  New York: Riverhead Books, 1996.  This deb ut collection of a Hispanic writer (born in Santo Domingo, MFA from Cornell, now lives in NYC) is a collection of 10 short stories which links the lives of his compatriots in New York with the presence of cockroaches.  His father's “ first year in Nueva York he lived in Washington Heights, in a roachy flat above what's now the Tres Marias restaurant” (177).  “ He never had time to sleep, let alone to go to a concert or the museums that filled entire sections of the newspapers.  And the roaches.  The roaches w ere so bold in his flat that turning on the lights did not startle them.  They waved their three-inch antennas as if to say, Hey puto, turn that shit off.  He spent five minutes stepping on their carapaced bodies and shaking them from his mattress before dropping into his cot and still the roaches crawled on him at night” (179).  Planning to marry to gain citizenship (and then divorce and bring his family from Santo Domingo to NYC), he pays a woman $800, pinning “ the receipt over his bed and before he went to sleep, he checked behind it to be sure no roaches lurked” (181).  Of course, he never sees her again!
        He does succeed in bringing his family to New York, however.  Years later, at a family party at the narrator's Tia Yrma's “apartment in the Bronx, off the Grande Concorde,” Yunior, too young to join the older kids in Tia's bedroom, sat outside the door: “so I had me and the roaches to mess around with,” he remembers (40).  Later, in “Edison, New Jersey,” sitting next to a “300-pound rock-and-roll chick who washes dishes at Friendly's.  She tells me about the roaches she kills with her water nozzle.  Boils the wings right off them” (125-126).

Disch, Thomas.  "The Roaches" (1965).  Strangeness: A Collection of Curious Tales.  Ed. Thomas M. Disch and Charles Naylor.  New York: Scribner's &
Sons, 1977.  175-184.  "…Disch's story…incorporates layers of negative belief [about roaches].  The heroine Marcia is a lonely young woman who hates cockroaches and spends every evening killing them in her apartment.  T he story's effectiveness depends on readers who are repelled by the look and mobility of cockroaches and horrified by the thought of thousands living behind their walls.  The story begins:

Miss Marcia Kensell had a perfect horror of cockroaches.…She couldn't see one without wanting to scream… .It was horrible, unspeakably horrible to think of them nesting in the walls, under the linoleum, only waiting for the light to be turned off, and then….No, it was best not to think about it.

"The intensity of Marcia's hatred and her single-minded pursuit of them create a link between herself and the insects.  One day she discovers that they understand and obey her commands.  Once aware of her powers over them, she sends them to kill boisterous and erotic neighbors who offend her:

When the insects return, the deadly deed done, they seem to regard her calmly.  Marcia believes she can read their one repetitious thought: 'We love you we love you we love you we love you.'  To her amazement she answers, 'I love you too….Come to me, all of you.  Come to me.'

"The story ends as roaches from every corner of the city hear her and crawl toward their mistress.  The story's message--that loathing can be an expression of hidden sympathies for the thing we loathe--is a subject we will touch on when we examine affinity.  The idea that cockroaches will kill on command reflects the common belief in the robotic mentality of insects and is itself a kind of infantile fantasy of power over others" (Lauck 6-7).

Douglas, Gregory [Eli Cantor].  The Nest(1980).  New York: Kensington Zebra
Book, 1986.  Horror novel on which the film They Nest(1988) is based.  Not surprisingly, the novel treats the themes of the film as well as the characters (human anyway) with more depth, relying less on visua l horror and exploring secondary themes the movie must ignore because of time constraints.  Cantor is a good novelist and The Nest is worth a careful and critical reading.

Dr. Ded Bug. 1989.  Short “comedy…seen from the insect's perspective as a frenzied chef attempts to hunt down and kill a cockroach” (Angier 118).

Dr. Roach-National Geographic documentary on the life and work of the famous exterminator (Amy)

Dracula.  1979: Mertins includes only this version of Dracula in his second list (films in which “ the arthropod/entomological roles are, at best, subsidiary" [85]), mentioning only that it employs both "cockroaches [and] entomology" (85).

Dunning, John.  Booked to Die (1992).  New York: Pocket Books, 2000.  In referring to the villainous Newton, hero cop/book collector Clifford Janeway says, “I'd really rather talk about the cockroach problem some other time” (93).  Talk about type-casting!

Ebejer, Francis.  Evil of the Cockroach King.  London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1960
(Republished as Wild Spell of Summer.  Malta: Union Press, 1968).
Although cockroaches appear in this novel, set on the island of Malta, only as background, they are intricately involved thematically.  Much of the novel takes place in the cellar of a family bakery where cheesecakes have been the speciality for generations.  Sharing the cellar is a giant cockroach--the King Cockroach of the title--who haunts the elderly baker.  His first appearance is memorable:

Slowly as he watched, the twin antennae, long, waving this way and that, appeared in the mouth of the hole, directly in the light.  They moved forward, still waving, until the head appeared, steady but for the antennae that rose from its apex; then, suddenly, the whole body, gleaming golden brown….

The cockroach, larger now tha n the shadow of the hole… , stood still on the tiny lip of stone.  Its antennae pointed straight at him and their waving movement had become slower and converging.  He stared across the room into the luminous blobs of its eyes and, as he sensed the slight s tirring of its wings, he clutched the sack [of flour] on each side of him with tensed fingers.

The wings that had seemed to spread out closed again and he sighed with relief.

He closed his eyes.

Before he could hear the whirring of its wings, he felt it on his neck: the touch of its legs, the weight of its body was on his flesh.  He screamed, clawed wildly at his neck, fell on his knees, rose again.

He dashed to the basement steps, and as he ran up into the house, he was still screaming at the top of his voice.  (15)

Believing the creature is a demon, Bertu refuses to return to the bakery and therefore refuses to make any more cheesecakes until after the village priest has exorcised the beast.  But the cockroach is neither the creature of the devil nor a sym bol of the greedy owner of the mechanized bakery who is trying to buy Bertu out.  The exorcism fails and when Bertu's daughter replaces him in the cellar bakery, she too falls under the scrutiny of this ominous golden brown creature.  Rather than to a Christian priest, she takes her problem to a traditional healer who lives inland, meeting on the way the driver of the bus on which she travels.  He ends up as her husband and the father of her children, making the cockroach responsible for a future that will prove more fruitful for Rosie than working in the dark cellar of her family bakery.

This is prophesied by the healer, who tells her that the creature "'is barren of seeds… .For its bowels have partaken of blood….Even now it is avid for more'" and warning her that if she stays in that cellar it will drink her blood as well, that "'There is one that will give your blood to the cockroach… .Beware of such a one'" (144).  The enigmatic prophecy becomes the mystery with the cockroach at its center that is worked out in the plot of the novel.  It is a mystery basic to much of Ebeger's work, lying, in his view, at the soul of Malta's discovery of its own identity as it attempts to meld its ancient heritage with the influences of Christianity, capitalism and technol ogy.

Rosie's religious fanatic of a brother proves to be the key to the mystery. His fanaticism is revealed, not as Christian but as his twisted understanding of the religion practiced at the Neolithic Temple outside the village.  Built three millennium b efore Christ it holds at its center a sacrificial well, a hole deep in the stone foundation of the island just as the cockroach's hole is deep in the foundation of Bertu's home.  Grog, the brother, makes that association and, although the family remains u n aware of his behavior, has sacrificed humans--including Rosie's mother--in that basement to the round-bellied gods of the Temple.  This becomes clear only after he has sacrificed himself to these gods he has invented, throwing himself off the 200 foot sto ne rampart of the village (200) after leaving Rosie for dead in the cellar.  Bertu, unaware of his son's death, returns to the bakery just in time to see the coockroach gorging itself on his daughter's blood.  This time he seeks no intermediate:

….he lifted one foot and held it poised… over the cockroach in his daughter's blood; then, slowly, he brought it down.

Teeth gritted with fear and hate, he listened for the awful crunch….

He heard nothing.

When he removed his foot, the imprint of his sandal in the red was clear and in it was half the severed body with the antennae waving wildly until gradually they drooped and stopped.

Then he..took off both sandals and laid them side by side on the crushed bloody half-body.  He rose,…and returned with a can…of parafin….

When nothing but ashes remained, he scooped them with both hands…and threw them outside….He went to the window three times until, at the center of the basement floor, there was only a round, black patch.

On the patch he sprinkled a fistful of flour. (202)

Eckstein, Gustav.  "I Began to Call Her Minnie."  Everyday Miracle  (1984).
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961.  210-229.  Though nonfiction, Eckstein brought a sympathetic relationship to the cockroach to his many readers in the Marquis' primed 1930ies and '40ies.

Eliot, T. S. Old Possom's Book of Practical Cats.
"That social activist, Jennyanydots, the Gumbie Cat, [c]onvinced that her household's vermin can be rehabilitated with a little remedial breeding,…forms the cockroaches into a scout troop and teaches the mice tatting and music"(Sims 346).

The Enchanted Cockroach  IMEX 2001 (moviefone.com).

Espada, Martin.  "Cockroaches of Liberation."  City of Coughing and Dead Radiators.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.  23-24. Poem

________.  "My Cockroach Lover."  Imagine the Angels of Bread.  New York:
Norton, 1996.  28-29; Urban Nature: Poems About Wildlife in the City.  Ed.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar.  Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2000:180.

Estrin, Marc.  Insect Dreams: The Half-Life of Gregor Samsa.  New York:
Bluehen Books, 2002.    Estrin's novel with its man-sized cockroach protagonist, Gregor Samsa, is, like Perkins' Bob Bridges, dedicated to Earth's well-being. Interestingly, each novel in uniquely different ways guesses that the regaining or maintaining of that well-being may call for the cockroach to make the ultimate sacrifice that characterizes the true culture hero.  Perkins'like Estrin's is a first novel, and is an enjoyable and thoughtful read, but Estrin's is truly a remarkable novel, easily the equal of Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (New York:Random House, 2000).  Though radically unlike Chabon's, it is strangely like it as well.  Anyone who has read Chabon knows why his novel has been called one of the great American novels.  Insect Dreams, though well-reviewed, has not so far received its due.

Like Chabon, Estrin paints a wide geographical and historical canvas.   Both start in the Prague that gave rise to Chabon's Golem and to Kafka's “The Metamorphosis,” the work that embraces the first half of the life of Gregor Samsa.  Kafka's Gregor, like Perkins' Bob Bridges, woke from a deep sleep to find himself on intimate terms with a larger than life cockroach.  Estrin's Gregor's life begins by denying the conclusion of Kafka's tale.  Gregor survives in Prague where, at a Cabinet of Curiosities containing a fossil cockroach 300 million years old, the cockroach Gregor finds his first employment and acceptance.  From there he journeys to New York City where he meets, among other greats of the music scene, the composer Charles Ives, becoming his friend and inspiration.  Then on to Washington, D. C., where he becomes a pivotal force in FDR's government before getting on to the real soul of the novel, the world of Los Alamos and the development of the nuclear bomb.  It is that section of the novel to which the title's Half-Life alludes embracing both the resurrected Gregor and the life-span of radioactive materials.  Estrin's disturbing intermingling of theme, allus ion, humor, and tragedy make this novel a rewarding reading experience for any reader but particularly for anyone as intrigued by the cultural significance of the cockroach as I am.

Insect Dreams also reminds us of the seminal influence of Kafka's creation in 20th and now 21st century cockroach art.  Along with Don Marquis' archy, the cockroach poet whose columns in  The New York Sun began in the 1920s and have been in print ever since, Gregor has spawned almost as many artistic offspring as a biological roach might have fathered, grandfathered, great-grandfathered, etc

Fairstein, Linda.  The Bone Vault.  New York et al: Scribner's, 2003.  Found among the potential exhibits from The Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York gathered for a joint show, The Modern Bestiary, is a jar of preserved Lobster Cockroaches.  In one scene a nervous entomologist twists the jar around so that “their legs and antennae seem… to catch and entangle in each other like a delicate jigsaw puzzle” (168-169).  This appreciative description accompanies a theme that focuses on the ethics of “collecting” human remains, but there is a suggestion of disapproval for the Natural History Museum's animal bones and preserved and stuffed remains as well.

Fenske, Keith.  "Cockroach in a Basket."  1998.
 (http:/www.compusmart.ab.ca/fenske/basket.htm)

Ferre, Rosario.  La Cucaracha Martina.  Mexico: Educiones huracan, 1990.
Juvenile bilingual.  Also in Senor Cat's Romance and Other Favorite Stories from Latin America (English).  Retold by Lucia M. Gonzalez.

Fitzhugh, Bill.  Pest Control.  New York: William Morrow,1996;  New York: Avon,
1997.  In a review of Fitzhugh's 2001 novel, Fender Benders, Gavin McNutt describes the novelist as “a strange and deadly amalgam of screen-writer and comic novelist” with a “facility for wit (and his taste for the perverse) [that] put him in a league with Carl Hiaason and Elmore Leonard,” and goes on to comment that the novel, “[l]ike the rest of his novels, is plotted like a tight, fairly pro forma Hollywood thriller” and is thoroughly researched as his earlier The Organ Grinders and  Pest Control (While writing the novel, Fitzhugh was hired by Brian Meehl to “write a…script on insects for the insect segment of BBC/PBS's series Eyewitness.” ).  The latter, published in 1996, centers on the lovable entomologist Bob Dillon (Music is always a part of Fitzhugh's metaphoric universe), the essential American innocent.  His dream is to develop an all-natural pest control, an Assassin Bee tle with a prodigious appetite for America's no. #1 enemy, the cockroach.  To support his unorthodox science, he has worked as an exterminator, a job he quits when the company insists he use a particularly lethal bug poison.  His family is in debt, the ren t overdue, the bank account depleted, so he answers a NY Times ad for an exterminator, not realizing it is mob-code for a hit-man.

Taking the job, he finds himself on the best-seller list of assassins when the target dies in an accident so real it doesn't even suggest a hit-because of course, it is a real accident.  None-the-less, this begins a giddy chase in which all the other “guns for hire” on the list are out to eliminate Bob.  You have to read the novel to appreciate how compelling, ridiculous (and true-to-life) the plot is, but the relevant thing for this bibliography is how insectsplay into both plot and theme.

Although not in any conventional sense characters, Bob's Assassin Beetles and their prime target, cockroaches (as well as a host of other fascinating insects Fitzhugh's research turned up), are vivid presences, leading a reviewer in the Liverpool Daily Post to claim it “ does for beetles what Jurassic Park did for dinosaurs.  Within its fascinating pages is a cast of creepy crawlers whose murderous methods put human predators to shame” (http://www.billfitzhugh.com/faq.html).  The American edition of Pest Control sports a “bright yellow cover with a dead cockroach in a sniper's sight” (http://www.stephenleather.com/six.html); however, the cockroaches in the novel-except for some clever renegades who manage to breed with Bob's hybrids with particularly gory results-are benign creatures despite the author's Mississippi boyhood where insects and pest control flourished.  His information about them, about the dangers of chemical insecticides and the alternate possibilities of natural controls are as accurate as they are vivid-as are the novel's larger themes of assassination and extermination.

The Flop House.  1932.  Columbia animated cartoon (Leskosky 60).

Fraser, Caroline.  "Ratty Go Batty."  The New Yorker 5 December 1994: 102.
Poem.

Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life.  Life subject short, 1994.  Shows "the author of 'Metamorphosis' struggling with writer's block on Christmas Eve, until his Capra-esque neighbors dispel his funk.  One brings him a cockroach" (Entertainment Weekly 10 March 1995:50).  Tied for Academy Award (March 1995).

La Gama, Alex.  A Walk in the Night.
A student paper written for an on-line course in Post-Colonial Literature makes a compelling case for the metaphoric relationship between the cockroachand the post-Colonial oppression of the peoples of South Africa.  Beginning with the experience of watching his own aunt hu nt and kill a cockroach, the student makes an extended (and implicitly ecofeminist) comparison of attitudes toward cockroaches and Colonial attitudes toward native peoples.  Under Aparteid, he writes, "the blacks become their society's cockroaches.  In a society that would rather exterminate a cockroach than coexist…with them, the blacks learn to survive on the margins of society.  La Gama pulls the [20thcentury American] reader from my aunt's world where the cockroach always dies into a dark, dirty world where some cockroaches survive."  His conclusion is that "La Gama's narrative perspective, reporting the situation from the view of the oppressed, contributes to the movement toward equality…in South Africa.  If only my aunt saw the world from the cockroach's perspective, she would have thought twice before sucking the cockroach away from its peaceful spot on the wall and into the dark, dirty world inside a vacuum cleaner bag."  The parallels to Breytenbach, Mwangi, and Soyinka are compelling.

Gaiman, Neil.  American Gods: A Novel.  New York: William Morrow, 2001.

…Shadow…pulled up in front of Night's Inn, paid thirty-five dollars, cash in advance, for his ground-floor room, and went into the bathroom.  A sad cockroach lay on its back in the middle of the tiled floor.  Shadow took a towel and cleaned the inside of the tub, then ran the water… .He sat in the tub watching the color of the bathwater change.  Then, naked, he washed his socks and briefs and t-shirt in the basin, wrung them out, and hung them on the clothesline that pulled out from the wall above the bathtub.  He left the cockroach where it was, out of respect for the dead.(134-135)

Hinzelmann shook his head.  “Biggest problem in this part of the world is poverty.  Not the poverty we had in the Depression but something more in…what's the word, means it creeps on the edges, like cock-a-roaches?”

“Insidious?”

Yeah.  Insidious. Logging's dead.  Mining's dead.  Tourists don't drive further north than the Dells…” (217).

“It's true, isn't it?  They killed him.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Nancy [Ananzi]. “They killed him.”

The young man [who stocks supermarket shelves] banged several boxes of Cap'n Crunch down on the shelf.  “They think they can crush us like cockroaches,” he said.  He had a tarnished silver bracelet circling his wrist.  “We don't crush that easy, do we?”  (334)

Galen, Nina.  The Cockroach Capers.  Ill. by Miriam Eliachar.  Two on-line stories--"The Secret of the Rainforest" and "The Good, the Bad and the Snuggly"-- for children 8 and older.  (http://www.ninagalen.com/kids/Cockroaches/body.htm)

Gass, William.  "Order of Insects."  Heart of the Heart of the Country(1968);  The Art of the Short Story: An International Anthology of Short Stories.  Ed. Daniel Halprin.  New York: Penguin, 1987.  318-322.  Compelling short story in which a housewife evolves from hatred of the cockroach castings on her carpet to appreciation not only of the roach but of the whole insect world.  She realizes that, in general, theirs is a richer life more full of beauty and meaning than hers!

Glowacki, Janosz.  Hunting Cockroaches and Other Plays (1987).  Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1990.  "The two characters in Glowacki's play are Polish immigrants living on New York's lower East Side.  Res pected in their own country as an actress and a writer, Anka and Jan Krupinsky find neither welcome nor work in New York.  He is teaching part-time at Staten Island Community College, attempting to teach 'Franz Kafka to students who drive to school in spo r ts cars' (75) while his wife furnishes their cockroach infested apartment from curb-side gatherings.  While Jan associates them with Kafka's Gregor, with the prisoner in Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo who befriends a spider in his cell, with the "termit es, sometimes other insects" in Milton and Beaudeaire who "rhythmically beat their heads against the floor to inform the hero of his imminent death," and with the insects in Genet (113), Anka's first response to the cockroaches who share their apartment is disgust.

"Among these nonzoocentric texts [alluded to], only Glowacki's shares the thematic emphasis of the zoocentric texts [like Kafka's] where cockroaches are seen as complex characters.  Appropriately it is the housewife, Anke, rather than her literate husband who gives the play its meaning.  When Jan appears with a can of roach poison...it is Anke who shares the cockroaches' drive to survive and propagate as Jan does not, who seems to recognize them as fellow immigrants, identifies with them and, will ing to accept her commensal neighbors, speaks for cooperation rather than extemination:

      we could start going out again at night.  We'd reach an agreement
      with the cockroaches since they sleep during the day and hunt at
      night.  That way we wouldn't bother one another anymore(27)"  (Copeland
      1993 233-234)

Gross, Gwendolen.  Field Guide: A Novel.  New York: Henry Holt, 2001.  Set in Australia.  “In the morning in his rented room in Ravenshoe, Leon noticed all the objects around him w hile he slept.  He hadn't noticed, when he lay down last night, the nubby off-white bedspread, the corona-shapes in burgundy on the wallpaper.  In the corner, there was a three-lagged table with an assortment of boarding-room accoutrements: a silver-handle d hairbrush with yellowed bristles, two crusty-looking hand towels, and a cracked water basin with a rose pattern filled to about a third.  A matching pitcher, filled to the brim, sat squat on the floor.  There were waterbugs on the surface of the basin, as if it were a pond, and beads of green algae growing out into the water from the sides” (201).

Grossman, Richard.  "Cockroach."  The Animals: A Pastoral.  St. Paul, MN:
Graywolf Press, 1990. 276. Poem.

Hairspray. 1988. Director John Waters.  “…portrays the teen scene in Baltimore at the height of the Roach Dance's popularity….

“In the film's final moments, [Riki] Lane appears in a silk evening gown embroidered with dinner-plate sized black velvet roaches.  While co-stars Sunny Bono, Ruth Brown, Debbie Harry, and Jerry Stiller stare in stunned disbelief, she shows how to shake one's head, thorax, and abdomen to the sound of Gene and Wendell.

'Stomp, step, skip, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.'  The instructions to The Roach Dance are in the song.

“'Squish, squash, kill that roach'” (Gordon 132, 134).

Halloween III: Season of the Witch.  1982.  Mertins notes the film uses hordes of "cockroaches, ants, spiders, etc" to scare audi ences as is often the case "in so-called 'exploitation' (e.g., horror, fantasy, and science fiction) films" (89).  He lists it among those films (done before 1986) in which cockroaches are "essential or very important to the plot or over all impact" (85).

Harington, Donald.  The Cockroaches of Stay More.  New York: Vintage, 1989.

"Welcome back to Stainmoor (pronounced 'Stay More') Valley, Ark., a world readers have come to know well through Donald Harington's wonderful novels….  This time, though, Mr. Ha rington shows us an entirely different part of Stay More, the world down among the grass, crumbs and garbage, the world of derelict cars and such fitful dangers as spiders, scorpions, bats, centipedes, and the Great White Mouse, even the devil himself, the Mockroach.

"Uncertain and vexing, this is the world of the cockroaches of Stay More and, yes, these cockroaches, or 'roosterroaches' as they prefer to be called, can talk--and there is much to be said.  Surprisingly enough, their lives are more familiar than bizarre or wacky; in fact, they're sharply focused reflections of the human lives going on around them.

"Despite their insidious reputation, it's hard to resist insects who've been given the power of speech and perception.  After all, they bring such fascinating news, such insights into the day-to-day business of survival.

"The roosterroaches of Stay More move about in a rather isolated universe, the world of Roamin' Road, including Holy House, where Man lives; the Parthenon, where Woman lives; Carlott (yes, that's the car lot), an assemblage of junked automobiles that is home to the outdoor roaches; and an abandoned schoolhouse--as well as various old clothes, daily leftovers and empty beer cans.

"At the center of the story is one Squire Sam Ingledew, a fine roosterroach, a 'philosopher, an epicure, a naturalist, and a bon vivant,' a thorough skeptic who is deaf from living inside a clock and too bashful ever to talk to a female.  He is certain of nothing, which is healthy because in time all his confus ions are unknotted as the roaches' world falls apart and is mended into something entirely different.

"….Mr. Harington's almost lyrical language and telling eye make this transformation quite delightful and wise--even possible--if the reader will but relax and truly listen to his insectile tale.  The roosterroaches of Stay More, it turns out, have a lot to say that's worth listening to" (Middleton).

~Harriman, George.  Illustrator of the original archy and mehitabel (Marquis).  His Krazy Kat cast also includes cockroaches that were the inspiration for “cartoonist Mark Kausler's design for the 1975 animated film Coonskin” (Gordon 122).

Harris, Thomas.  Hannibal.  New York: Delacorte, 1999.
“To attack an agent of the Federal Bureau [Starling]…with Mason's false evidence was a big leap for Krendler.  It left him a little breathless.  If the Attorney General caught him, she would crush him like a roach ” (337).  Harris has a more gruesome fate in store for Krendler, but it's unfortunate that he perpetuates the roach/bad guy stereotype since Krendler is really a rotten, jealous, vindictive human and roaches, whatever else they may be, are none of those things.

Heinlein, Robert B. Starship Troopers. 1997.  Basis of the 1997 film of the same name.

[Herron-Allen, Edward (1861-1943)].  "The Blue Cockroach."  The Purple Sapphire and Other Posthumous Papers, Selected from the Unofficial Records of the University of Cosmopoli by Christopher Blayre, Sometimes Registrar of the University (1921).  London: Philip Alan & Co., 1921.  129-
143.

Hibbert, Martin A.  Parallel Lives:  Monk/ Martin A. Hibbert--Cockroach/ Rupert M. Leydell.  Exeter: Apparitions, 1989.

Highsmith, Patricia.  "Noted From a Respectable Cockroach."  The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder.  New York: Penzler, 1975.  "This disgruntled old roach is the descendant of generations of roaches who have lived at the Hotel Duke on Washington Square in New York City.  He comments on the loss of values apparent in the present very un-Henry Jamesian clientele, a loss clearly meant to reflect society at large.  Then he deserts the degenerate building, comfortably tucked into the suitcase of an equally disgruntled European guest since the problem is too vast for him to solve, as do the fauna in most of Highsmith 's other beastly tales" (Copeland 1997 17).

The House Where Cockroaches Live to a Ripe Old Age.  60 minute video produced by Israeli Maagalot Productions, Tel Aviv.  "Yoram Kaniuk is an Israeli author of fantasy literature.  This documentary examines his problems, his fears and failures, and his wonderful relationship with his wife, who is so full of love for all living things, that even cockroaches have no fear in their household…."

Hogan, Linda.  "Small Life."  And a Deer's Ear, Eagle's Song and Bear's Grace: Animals and Women.  Ed. Theresa Corrigan and Stephanie Hoppe. Pittsburg: Cleis, 1990.  52.
 "the narrator of the Native American poet Linda Hogan's 'Small Life'….has 'surrendered to…/the arcana of insects' because she understands that 'Their breath is the song of air,' and that when
The roach
its shining back
and hairthin feet
creaks the tiles
it is the sound of 'night's music' and that it 'means we are safe/we are never alone'" (Copeland 1993 243).

Hogan, Wayne.  “Can a Cockroach Have a Nice Day?”  The Latham Letter XV, 4
        (Fall 1994).

Horowitz, Ruth.  Breakout at the Bug Lab.  Illustrated by Joan Holub. Dial.
        When a giant cockroach named Max escapes from their mother's bug laboratory, Leo and his brother receive help from a mysterious stranger in order to recapture the runaway roach.

Hubbell, Sue.  A Country Year.  Quoted in Valerie Harmes.   The National Audubon Society Almanac of the Environment: The Ecology of Everyday Life.  New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1994.  76.
"In truth, I d on't mind the wood cockroaches that come in on my firewood.  Their digestive system and mine differ enough so that we don't share the same ecological niche; they do me no harm, we are not competing, so I can take a long view of them.  There is no need to h arry them as a bee would, or to squash them as a housewife would.  Instead I stoop down beside them and take a closer look, examining them carefully.  After all, having in my cabin a harmless visitor whose structure evolution has been barely touched since Upper Carboniferous days strikes me, a representative of an upstart and tentative experiment in living form, as a highly instructive event.  Two hundred and fifty million years, after all, is a very long view indeed."

________.  Broadsides from Other Orders: A Book of Bugs.  New York: Random
House, 1993.

Human Experiments (a.k.a. Beyond the Gate).  1982.  Mertins includes it among films in which arthropods play "incidental" roles, simply mentioning that it employs "cockroaches, spiders, etc" (88).

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  1984. Although the film is an extravaganza of "scarab beetles, entomorphagy, cockroaches, phasmids, centipedes, ceramtycids, [and] houseflies," Mertins includes it--rightly so since they are all used only to terrify the audience--among films with relatively "incidental" entomological elements (85).

Jaffee, Jody.  Horse of a Different Killer.  New York: Ivy, 1996.  “The Palmetto State [South Carolina]  (named, I wondered, after the tree or the Titian-colored roaches, bigger than my index finger that bombarded themselves into people during rutting season)” (68).

James, Mary.  Shoebag.  New York: Scholastic, 1990.  Juvenile fiction.  Commenting on the myth of the dirty cockroach, Lauck observes that "They also wash themselves vigorously after being touched by human beings, a fact incorporated in Mary James's novel Shoebag, where a young cockroach wakes up one morning and discovers that he had turned int o a little boy.  As a bacteria-laden human being he is shunned by his insect family and friends" (79).  Clearly James, like so many creators of cockroach characters, finds it valuable to play off Kafka as well as off realistic cockroach behavior.  "Adult readers are likely to appreciate James' allusions and puns more fully than most teenage connisseurs will, but the metamorphosis that causes the cockroach Shoebag to wake one morning to find himself… a ten-year-old boy is a powerful device whether the reader recognizes it as a reversal of Gregor Samsa's metamorphosis or not.  When they finally read Kafka, young readers will remember Jam