Cockroach

Animal Series

by Marion Copeland

The cockroach could not have scuttled along, almost unchanged, for two hundred and fifty million years – some two hundred and forty-nine before man evolved – unless it was doing something right. It would be fascinating as well as instructive to have access to the cockroach’s own record of its life on earth, to know its point of view on evolution and species domination over the millennia. Such chronicles would perhaps radically alter our perceptions of the dinosaur’s span and importance – and that of our own development and significance. We might learn that throughout all these aeons, the dominant life form has been, if not the cockroach itself, then certainly the insect.

Attempts to chronicle the cockroach’s intellectual and emotional life have been made only within the last century when a scientist titled his essay on the cockroach "The Intellectual and Emotional World of the Cockroach", and artists as radically different as Franz Kafka and Don Marquis created equally memorable cockroach protagonists.

At least since Classical Greece, authors have brought cockroach characters into the foreground to speak for the weak and downtrodden, the outsiders, those forced to survive on the underside of dominant human cultures. Cockroaches have become the subjects of songs (La Cucaracha), have competed in "roachraces" and have even ended up in recipes. In this accessible, sympathetic and often humorous book, Marion Copeland examines the natural history, symbolism and cultural significance of this poorly understood and much-maligned insect.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Animals

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2003

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cockroaches are horrible. I'm pretty sure I've got legitimate katsaridaphobia, your word of the day, which means "fear of cockroaches." It's probably common, but a few weeks ago I saw a giant one in my otherwise pristine (at the time) bathroom, and I stood there paralyzed for almost 10 minutes sweating before I was able to back up and get my spray. The spray is awesome because it has an incredible range, so I hit it from all the way across the room and the thing went NUTSO and started COMING AT ME, so I ran backwards and kept the spray drowning it, and it was twitching and going nuts but still running until finally it gave in and died. Ugh, it still freaks me out just thinking about it!

Anyway, I had this book Cockroach on my shelf because it's part of this neat animal series. It's basically a survey of the cockroach in the human experience, starting with science and taking a look at psychology, human relations, art, and literature and how perceptions of the cockroach have shaped and been shaped by different cultures over the years.

It's interesting, if not entirely coherent. Copeland doesn't seem to be leading to any particular thesis, instead just riffing for 200 pages on mankind's most loved and loathed insect. It's good.

The author lingers on the literary more than anything else, so I wasn't surprised when I looked her up and saw that her background is in literature. This isn't a criticism, though I did approach the book hoping for more on cockroach iconography.

Although the book was good, I do have one criticism: IT DIDN'T WORK! I thought it would help me see the beauty and life in these infesting abominations, but I had another one in my house yesterday and I was still terrified and killed by dumping poison on it. Sorry, dudes. Your beautiful, but stay the hell away from me.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this animal series by Reaktion. They explore different animals not simply by providing biological facts, but also by looking at their place in human art,culture,literature and folklore. The cockroach looms large in the human imagination and I learned a lot about it here. I did not know of its position as a sort of trickster symbol for slaves in the us and for downtrodden peoples elsewhere.
I think the author was at their best when writing about areas outside her area of expertise. The word chthonic shows up about 15 or twenty times. It’s a perfectly good word to use when talking about cockroaches, but a bit overused here, perhaps.longer section on the cockroach as eco feminist hero was not my favorite, but , all in all , a really excellent read and a marvelously illustrated book as well.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite having to overcome a fear of them early in my pest control sales career, I like roaches. They're interesting little buggers. The best thing I learned from this book is that La Cucaracha isn't actually about cockroaches. It was a slang term for the women involved in Zapata's uprising who really needed their marijuana to keep traveling. Copeland also discusses cockroaches' natural history and their cultural impact in stores like Metamorphosis, jokes, and films like Joe's Apartment.

[Scott Tienken · Rating 3 out of 5]

not one of the better of an awesome series

[Pedro Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pensaba que era una novela pero no, por lo demás está bien ilustrado y tiene bastante información, por eso le pongo el cuatro

[Timothy · Rating 2 out of 5]

"A biocentric reading of the human record as it relates to the cockroach, whether in the sciences or in the arts, translated to reflect the cockroach's own point of view, while revealing the natural history, myths and stories of this long-time resident of Earth, provides a lens through which I suggest we may come to share the cockroach's very long view."

That direct quote from the book is just one example of the arcane, meandering sentence structures that are littered throughout this work. They are matched by the unfocused, meandering thoughts of the author that seemed to defy any attempt at organization by either the author or any editors who laid hands on this manuscript before it saw the light of the printer's workroom. What could have been an entertaining and imformative book is just a jumbled mix of pseudo-intellectual ramblings and scatter-shot information. If you want to read something about cockroaches that will hold your interest without taxing your patience, I would suggest finding a copy of "The Compleat Cockroach" by David Gordon. While the latter work does not include as much analysis of the influence of cockroaches in the fields of literature, art, and films, it does have the benefit of never using words such as "chthonic" or "ecofeminism", let alone overusing them as Marion Copeland does.

[Francesc Mesquita-Joanes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una colección muy interesante de libros sobre animales emblemáticos, de la cual este es un buen ejemplo, aunando información biológica (poca, el primer capítulo) con (y principalmente) aspectos culturales (canciones, literatura, películas, arte). De lectura amena, con notas e información adicional (webs, lecturas recomendadas), y una multitud de preciosas ilustraciones que reflejan la importancia a lo largo de la historia y la cultura de estos animales. Lo que menos me ha gustado, la traducción.