Kim Gek Lin Short

China Cowboy is an indeterminate prose work that veers toward story telling. Non-linear in that it ricochets back & forth between 1989 (when the heroine/victim La La is 12), 1997 (when La La is either 20 or dead) & 2001 (when La La's story has become myth, at an exhibition at Soyabean Gallery, when La La herself is dead or alive). One could say that La La is both dead & alive throughout. The setting is America set in Hong Kong, that pulp town par excellence. That La La's parents support themselves through a combination of prostitution & picking up tourists stranded during hurricane weather, then murdering them & stealing their luggage is apropos, since Ren is one of these typhoon-tourists. He survives to return as the American cowboy cum soybean farmer cum artist cum rapist cum pedophile. From the top, the story of La La & her abductor Ren (aka Run aka William O'Rennessey) recalls Lolita & Humboldt Humboldt, as it must. It's not just La La's name or age. The violation that is violence, or vice versa, is more overt in China Cowboy & the prose is not the perfect English sentence of Nabokov (which I find suspicious), but rather its antithesis. China Cowboy trumps Lolita in that La La gets out more alive than dead, even if she is really dead. Lolita survives but as the living dead. La La is the more compelling presence, perhaps because the story is told from both her & Ren's perspectives, so that the tables are at least turned 90 degrees (La La is still, it's important to note, a victim, no matter whether or not she "wins" in the end). I imagine La La giving Nabokov the finger, perhaps both in homage & in defiance. I may be creating my own text in thinking of La La this way. For all I know, Gek Lin Short adores Nabokov. But La La has agency in a way that Lolita does not. La La can get up on the table & sing. Her imitation (Clone) becomes something new. Her victim identity is not all she is. Nevertheless, she is dead & gone, or she splits into three: dead, alive, gone. Ren, differently, splits into two: Ren & Bill. But Ren & Bill are one & the same in a way that Pet, La La & Patsy Clone are not. China Cowboy also brings to mind Alice Notley's feminine epics, Descent of Alette & Disobedience. Both author's reference Dante in creating their heroine's journeys. And Gek Lin Short's Ren /Run, Clint Eastwood, Patsy Cline/ Patsy Clone reminded me of Notley's Hardwood/Hardware/Hardwill; Mitch / Robert Mitch-ham / Dante Hardone, etc. China Cowboy is in keeping with other books on the Tarpaulin Sky list in that it has a transgressive nature. Trangress away!… (meer)