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The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits
Fiction. Poetry. Asian American Studies. THE BUGGING WATCH & OTHER EXHIBITS is the prose elegy of a boy who wants to be a bug in order to save by symbiosis the dead girl he loves. Can Harlan, in "the basement forever inside him," conjure Toland back from "the scars of Monday"? Enacted in prose poems and cross-referenced datebooks, the inseparable lovers, Harlan and Toland, eternally rehearse for a real life together, repeating in that instant between being and nonbeing, the loss into which their love escaped.
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2010
About the author
Kim Gek Lin Short
7 books17 followersKim Gek Lin Short is the author of the lyric novels The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits and China Cowboy, both published by Tarpaulin Sky Press. She is also the author of the cross-genre chapbooks Run (Rope-a-Dope) and The Residents (dancing girl press).
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 23, 2017
“Where are we going? she asked. Tuesday, Harlan whispered. Tuesday, with sunflowers tall as true suns.”
The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits by Kim Gek Lin is like nothing you’ve read before, a prose poetry/fiction story of a pair of lovers who are part insect, part household detritus, part dead, all yearning. One is a girl who touched everything, another with a most special broken needle. One who chafed against halos, another who stamped a cheatsheet on a mitten.
The chapters are morbid yet delicate. There is frailty on every page, but scored with second lives, or after lives. I was afraid for everything and everyone throughout, but was also sure the aftermath would produce its own grotesque gorgeousness. Plus TBW has some of the most inspired and cerebral language I’ve ever read. Even as it makes your skin crawl: “bending like unset wax the pleats of her legs.”
One of my favourite chapters marks off the hours of a day with synesthetic precision: “that chilly blue hour… that crowded white hour… that noisy woolen hour… that star-rationed hour… that oblong enchanted hour…”
The “Exhibits” part of the book contains details of notebooks or journals kept by each hapless lover with the language modulating satisfyingly from one to another. I would have loved to see a deep dive art book of these sections - hand written, pinned, glued, and so on. Even more to see an animated version of the whole book. I have no idea how someone would film this but I’d love to see it done: “he took my shining strangeness into his arms, made with it a map…”
Ms. Gek Lin doesn’t let up for a second. Phrases like “a funny feeling like gabardine” or “a chilly discipline of silver” sound so strange and so right. I didn't always understand but I always appreciated. Here's to more mind bending beauty.
The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits by Kim Gek Lin is like nothing you’ve read before, a prose poetry/fiction story of a pair of lovers who are part insect, part household detritus, part dead, all yearning. One is a girl who touched everything, another with a most special broken needle. One who chafed against halos, another who stamped a cheatsheet on a mitten.
The chapters are morbid yet delicate. There is frailty on every page, but scored with second lives, or after lives. I was afraid for everything and everyone throughout, but was also sure the aftermath would produce its own grotesque gorgeousness. Plus TBW has some of the most inspired and cerebral language I’ve ever read. Even as it makes your skin crawl: “bending like unset wax the pleats of her legs.”
One of my favourite chapters marks off the hours of a day with synesthetic precision: “that chilly blue hour… that crowded white hour… that noisy woolen hour… that star-rationed hour… that oblong enchanted hour…”
The “Exhibits” part of the book contains details of notebooks or journals kept by each hapless lover with the language modulating satisfyingly from one to another. I would have loved to see a deep dive art book of these sections - hand written, pinned, glued, and so on. Even more to see an animated version of the whole book. I have no idea how someone would film this but I’d love to see it done: “he took my shining strangeness into his arms, made with it a map…”
Ms. Gek Lin doesn’t let up for a second. Phrases like “a funny feeling like gabardine” or “a chilly discipline of silver” sound so strange and so right. I didn't always understand but I always appreciated. Here's to more mind bending beauty.
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August 27, 2010Linked prose poems--propose a narrative and revise it twice. Evokes and jars sympathy--swings btwn pure joy of language invention and staggering sadness--
"What will we do? she asked, burping a miracle with her soggy hands."
& unflinching, visceral in terms of investigation into dynamics of relationships, how one exerts force on, revises, mutilates, remakes etc, others self-conceptions, body, self-composure, chronology, etc. in the laboratory of the house and stage of public.
"My name, I was not sure, but the pneumatica made me famous, in a play I enacted continuously, in the shiny language of spilling. But Harlan called me Toland, a body I could not dissolve."
Add w/Nylund the Sarcographer (by Jyll McSweeney) & Killing Kanako = happy summer reading.
"What will we do? she asked, burping a miracle with her soggy hands."
& unflinching, visceral in terms of investigation into dynamics of relationships, how one exerts force on, revises, mutilates, remakes etc, others self-conceptions, body, self-composure, chronology, etc. in the laboratory of the house and stage of public.
"My name, I was not sure, but the pneumatica made me famous, in a play I enacted continuously, in the shiny language of spilling. But Harlan called me Toland, a body I could not dissolve."
Add w/Nylund the Sarcographer (by Jyll McSweeney) & Killing Kanako = happy summer reading.
June 26, 2012
This book opens with a series of exhibits. Each is like a mason jar containing fermented chimeras, from which threads are extracted and grafted onto balloons, umbrellas, pajamas, leotards and cake, then sewn up with special needles. Breaking the seal of each jar unleashes a particular scent and stench, whose particles attach to your nose hairs. Reading each exhibit is like reading a segment of knitting, with the over and under and the accidental mis-stitch, with its density and breath and porous fabric. Each exhibit is a door, “opened in the afternoon always inside her a window” (25). Read more at Lantern Review: http://www.lanternreview.com/blog/201...
January 4, 2015
This is the first book by Short I had the pleasure of reading. I stumbled upon it completely by accident and immediately feel in love with Shorts expressive short stories as they follow the two characters, Toland and Harlan, through their experiences (together and apart) that, I assume are not in chronological order. Short's writing style is unique and expertly composed to give the reader an almost vulnerable and highly personal understanding of the character's and their situations. Would certainly recommend to anyone experiencing a creative block looking for a short, thought provoking little book to get some inspiration pumping.
April 24, 2011
Odd yet oddly charming prose pieces. Not exactly prose poems, yet not exactly a "story" either. There are 2 characters, Harlan & Toland who are not exactly human, but who have humanesque experiences & emotions. They are perhaps male & female or perhaps some other more diffuse gender. They are made up of needles & yarn. Fluids & insects. Theater & adolescent yearning. What exactly happens to them or by way of them is almost impossible to pin down.
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April 20, 2011This came in the post today, and is the most gorgeous volume I've seen in a while. I'm coveting it a little before reading.
September 20, 2011
My review of The Bugging Watch....
http://www.prickofthespindle.com/revi...
http://www.prickofthespindle.com/revi...
December 18, 2012
Like China Cowboy, I need someone to run up to and say: did you read this because I'm not sure what I read LOL.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews