The Trials of Roderick Spode the Human Ant - Hardcover

Mamet, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1402238304 ISBN 13: 9781402238307

Publisher: Sourcebooks Inc, 2010

Synopsis

For years, David Mamet has given the world gripping drama, hilarious encounters, and unforgettable characters through his plays, films, and novels. Now he brings his trademark style to a whole new genre, with a laugh-out-loud comic collection that provides a clever and postmodern take on the world of superheroes and ordinary life.
The Trials of Roderick Spode ("The Human Ant") follows the bizarre and hilarious adventures of Roderick Spode, an ordinary man who, after a few too many drinks, confuses a photo booth with a booth that gives out special powers, so he now turns into an ant half the time. Follow Roderick as he hangs out with his friend Cocky Cockroach, freelances as a comma, and fights his nemesis: the European Sourdough Rye!
The Trials of Roderick Spode ("The Human Ant") is a brilliantly offbeat and delightfully different offering from one of our greatest living talents.

About this title

About the Author

David Mamet is the award-winning author of numerous plays including Oleanna, Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, and Speed-The-Plow, screenplays for such films as The Verdict, The Untouchables, and Wag The Dog, and the novels The Village, The Old Religion and Wilson.

Reviews

One of America's most prestigious writers of plays (Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross), screenplays, and novels turns his talents to lightweight whimsy in this series of slight, scribbly glimpses of an accidental superhero who thought he was stepping into a carnival photo booth, but actually was paying to be transformed into an ant half the time. This leads to trials, not adventures. Among other episodes, Roderick uncontrollably becomes an ant when a friend invites him on a picnic, is forced to work as a comma when he can't assist the police, and is transformed into a mutant combination of ant and cow when his fiendish foe European Sourdough Rye laces his drink with bovine growth hormone. The series of misadventures is gently amusing, but it's hard to imagine anyone without Mamet's fame getting the book published—certainly not in hardcover and at this price. (May)
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Playwright, film director, and novelist Mamet adds another star to his crown with what certainly looks like a kids’ picture book in format but is assigned the classification and cataloging of a graphic novel. If they like cracked whimsy, aficionados of the latter won’t scorn it. At a carnival, Roderick Spode reels drunkenly into the last attraction he can afford, which he may think is a photo booth but is actually a “transform yourself into an ant half the time” booth—a natural enough mistake, given that the two booths appear side by side. He first transforms when Betty invites him to a picnic. Soon, the police commissioner has a skylight signal for his services (which he doesn’t see because he’s already transformed), and he’s acquired a coats of arms; a sidekick, Cocky Cockroach; and two archfiend foes, Chaos the Turtle and European Sourdough Rye (a slice of bread). His adventures are of a piece with his origins: utterly silly. Hand-lettered and drawn as if Mamet were a poor man’s Roz Chast, satire gets no lighter-weight than this. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Sourcebooks Inc
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1402238304
• ISBN 13: 9781402238307
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 25