ManBug - Softcover

Ilsley, George K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551522039 ISBN 13: 9781551522036

Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2006

Synopsis

The first novel by George K. Ilsley, whose first story collection, Random Acts of Hatred, was published to acclaim in 2004. Told in dream-like fragments, ManBug unfolds as a love story between Sebastian, an entomologist with Asperger’s Syndrome, and Tom, a spiritual bisexual who may or may not be recruiting Sebastian for a cult. They navigate their relationship as damaged goods, seeking meaning and value in themselves through the other; they also try to avoid the inevitable toxins around them, both real and imagined—like bugs avoiding insecticide—while asking the question, Just how much poison can any of us absorb? ManBug is a beguiling, tragicomic novel about beauty, horror, desire, and what lurks just beneath the skin.

About this title

About the Author

George K. Ilsley is the author of the story collection Random Acts of Hatred (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004); his stories have also appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. He has biked around the Adriatic, hitchhiked to Mexico, ambled through the Himalayas, and taught English in Tokyo. He now lives in Vancouver.

Reviews

Though this slim and confounding first novel from Canadian author Ilsley (after the collection Random Acts of Hatred) could be called a love story, it might more accurately be classified, considering its academic tone and scarcity of plot, as a case study, a detached observation of two men in love. The subjects are Sebastian, an unemployed entomologist with Asperger's Sydrome, and Tom, a bisexual into New Age spirituality. Composed of bite-size fragments, the book places the two men and their unlikely relationship under the microscope, largely eschewing conventions such as scenes, dialogue and plot, a daring but failed experiment with digressive meditations on the world of insects, the way to awareness and male sexuality. Ilsley delivers the odd, compelling tangent (e.g. Sebastian's fascination with bugs occasions a deliciously creepy description of lard worms), and strikes humorous notes poking fun at the New Age movement or discussing Sebastian's attraction to men's armpits ("hidden bonsai gardens"). But while clearly the product of a unique and active intellect, the book lacks direction and narrative pull.
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Sebastian used to be a research entomologist. Mostly, Sebastian researched the development of pesticides.

Much about this work in the killing field disturbed Sebastian (for example, the casual use of the concept "termination opportunity").

When distressed, Sebastian tended to express conflict. A blurt of truth might escape his lips before he could help himself. This could be, for example, while compiling mortality data, or tweaking a statistical analysis of residual contamination by increasing the sample size. Smoothing the result, it was called. Smoothing the rough edges of truth: the research facility, through a shift in perspective, became a factory generating statistics. They virtually manufactured data, based on demand.

Statisticians called the data massage, increasing the sample size.

Managers called it, broadening the research horizon.

Sebastian called it, diluting the evidence. Diluting it until the answer came back, "no detectable residue."

But all the poison was still in there.

Somewhere. Somebody was eating it.

Edition details

• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1551522039
• ISBN 13: 9781551522036
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256