In teeming fellowship roaches inhabit our bathrooms and kitchens. They live behind walls and under floorboards, in the dishwasher and the oven. They eat the crumbs we drop and drink deeply from the moisture left after a long shower or from a leaky toilet. Their menus are varied, including feces, dead humans, and their own young, among other delicacies. They also have a particular taste for warm sour beer.
Cockroaches are pure instinct, straightforward sentient machines.
Despite their reputation as dirty disease-carrying vectors, roaches are obsessed with cleanliness as much as the most immaculate of housekeepers. Their technique for reproduction is highly sophisticated, and it is considerably more efficient than that of human beings. Peppered with quotes from literature and folklore, The Cockroach Papers is the most interesting exploration of the most unwelcome and tenacious of insects. Richard Schweid was born in Nashville. He is the author of Hot Peppers, Barcelona, Catfish and The Delta.