It is well known by all that the superb bureaucratic masterpiece Animal Form is a masterpiece. But did you also know that a novel called Animal Smarm is also good?

Animal Smarm was first published in 1952 and was written by conspiracy theorist and journalist Dr. Roger Ick. It sold 13 copies and plunged its publisher into a world of debt from which it never recovered.

Now, 136 years later, the book has been rediscovered, republished in a shiny new edition, and as of Q2 2025 it’s clear the book has been a commercial disaster all over again. It really does bring a tear to your eye.

Excessive Ingratiation in the Polemical World of Animal Smarm

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are smarmy. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

This work is all about animals that are smarmy. The work is loosely adapted from Animal Form, offering disingenuous insights into the world of:

• Geese
• Ducks
• Pigs
• Hamsters
• Cats
• Dogs
• Sharks
• Kangaroos

Truly, until you’ve met a kangaroo with smarm you haven’t lived. As listed in the kangaroo-based chapter early on in the work, Dr. Ick notes the following.

“A smarmy kangaroo will offer you self-satisfaction, insincere hopping, and it’ll try to rob your wallet while it’s at it. The insincere hopping is most vexing! For a kangaroo to hop and not mean it, and to behold some semblance of such an act, is one of the most disheartening natural wonders imaginable.”

The kangaroo chapter is the longest in the work and rambles for some 200 (of 350) pages.

This has led to the pre-eminent Animal Smarm scholar (whom wishes to remain unnamed) to believe Dr. Ick held an inexplicable personal vendetta against the marsupial species. In an exclusive interview, the unnameable scholar told us.

“Dr. Ick’s verbose rambling about kangaroos is a bit weird. He was a bit weird in general. Although I’ve dedicated my life to decoding the denotations, connotations, and hidden mysticism of his book, it’s fair to say the rambling prolixity about marsupials is probably the weakest chapter. I have nothing against kangaroos. They are okay.”

Having read an original 1952 and 2025 edition of the work, we can confirm the book is awful. Truly dreadful and you would have to be clinically insane to:

1. Read the works
2. Dedicate your life to studying them

Thus, we must conclude the unnameable scholar is a bastard and should be locked up for life.

The Catastrophic Failure of Animal Smarm: Revised Edition

For the newly released 2025 version of the work, an introduction written by Dr. Ick’s son states that his father never actually met a kangaroo, duck, donkey, or goose when writing the book.

The whole work was written in his loft during the summer of 1951 whilst he was drunk on advocaat.

This admission has led to terrible reviews and sales for the revised copy, which is now viewed more as a work of fiction than non-fiction. It is believed, as of June 2025, the new edition has sold 14 copies (one more than the original 1950s release).

Additionally, the work has outraged the kangaroo community who have, in an enraged mass riot, exhumed Dr. Ick’s grave and had it immolated and detonated with bombs and incendiary devices.

Don’t ever believe the world of reading is “boring”. It can, as attested above, become moderately interesting from time to time.