Gregor by Drew Gummerson. Review by Sean McNulty

In Drew Gummerson’s reimagining of Kafka’s Metamorphosis one day Gregor wakes to find his parents have been turned into bugs. What to do? These are difficult days for adult children who have failed to fly the nest. No job. No security. No future. Follow Gregor as he learns to fend for himself, and learns to cope with cockroaches for parents. 

GREGOR by Drew Gummerson

Review by Sean McNulty

Of all the esques, Kafkaesque gets bandied about a hell of a lot, doesn’t it?  It might even outsell picturesque and grotesque in the global word markets.  Pythonesque is still around but doesn’t have the same prestige.  Romanesque was dominant for ages but then rose and fell, naturally.  Drew Gummerson’s short ‘Gregor’ is most definitely a Kafkaesque tale, but ALL CAPS KAFKAESQUE since it is the Metamorphosis rewritten, reconfigured.  It is the metamorphosis of a metamorphosis.  Almost.  (Maybe a hemimetabolism.)  Drew might be the perfect writer to attempt such a blasphemy, for like Franz, his writing is also bold and disorienting, and markedly absurd.  

I’ve always felt Drew Gummerson would have mingled nicely with the British avant-gardists, alongside the B.S. Johnsons and Christine Brooke-Roses, some radical in a hovel dreaming of the continent and in love with the possibilities of fiction, but writing about kitchen-sink miseries, sticky rock, and, of course, bums.

There is also something of the Oulipo movement about him, which he has acknowledged in interviews.  For those unacquainted, Oulipo is a literary collective which originated in France in the 1960s and is exemplified by the work of Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec.  The movement relishes constraint and playfulness in literature and is linguistically daring, esoteric, frequently humorous.  This is Drew Gummerson in a nutshell; but with that being said, his work remains very much a thing all his own.

Drew often produces stories on a theme.  For example, he has completed a whole collection of tales named after Tom Cruise movies (‘The Colour of Money’ is a particular favourite).  And ‘Gregor’ is one of his ‘Hot Dog’ tales, themed around, well, hot dogs.  The thrust of the story involves not only an inversion of Kafka’s inciting event (here Gregor wakes to find it is his parents that have turned into bugs, not he) but takes a satirical jab at the history of translation, with Gummerson imagining he is producing a rather bad interpretation of the original text (Very Oulipian!) – reading it with this in mind only adds to the many joys the story has to offer. 

Gregor here is a bit of a chancer who exploits the situation for his benefit, accepting financial donations from people after claiming his parents have died.  He’s also a bit of a slob who enjoys getting naked, both privately and on occasion professionally.  His poor diet (hot dogs) has made him sort of resemble a frankfurter, and eventually ‘having no bumps or curves’ makes him the ideal life model for an art class.  

Subversive and hilarious, this is a study of body and soul, an audacious retelling of an old classic which Kafka himself would surely endorse.  As is the way with Mr Gummerson, it is also a damn good experiment.  

‘Gregor’ is a chapbook published by Sunburnt Saints.  It’s currently available on subscription from their website and from Bearded Badger Books in Derby.  

 https://sunburntsaints.co.uk/

https://substack.com/profile/189086169-bearded-badger-books