The Spider's House. Paul Bowles (Penguin Modern Classics) [Paperback]

Paul Bowles (Author)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Modern Classics | Publication Date: November 2009

Fez, 1954, and American ex-pat Stenham reluctantly accepts a guide for his night-time walk home through the streets of the Medina. A nationalist uprising is transforming the country, much to the annoyance of Stenham, who enjoys the trappings of the old city. His path soon crosses with the young, illiterate son of a healer, another outsider to the newly politicised life of Morocco, in this brutally honest novel of life in the midst of terrorism, violence and the ugly opportunism that accompanies both. Bowles' most masterly novel combines his classic themes: the conflict of Eastern and Western cultures and the trials of otherness.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born in New York in 1910, Paul Bowles is considered one of the most remarkable American authors of the twentieth century. He studied music with composer Aaron Copland before moving to Tangier, Morocco, with his wife, Jane. His first novel, The Sheltering Sky, was a bestseller in the 1950s and was made into a film by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1990. Bowles's prolific career included many musical compositions, novels, collections of short stories, and books of travel, poetry, and translations. His novels include The Spider's Nest, Up Above The World, and Let It Come Down.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (November 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141191368
• ISBN-13: 978-0141191362
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,997,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mektoub vs. Modernization, May 21, 2003

By 

Anne (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spider's House (Paperback)

It may be an anachronism, but Paul Bowles' THE SPIDER'S HOUSE can best be characterized as a "post-political" novel par excellence. Nearly 50 years after its publication, it is nothing short of prophetic in both tone and content. The meaning of the book unfolds ironically from the epigraph, taken from the Q'uran: "The likeness of those who choose other patrons than Allah is as the likeness of the spider when she taketh unto herself a house, and lo! the frailest of all houses is the spider's house, if they but knew."

The novel portrays the last days of French rule in Morocco through the eyes of an American expat writer on the one hand and an illiterate Arab boy on the other. Stenham, the American, is in love with the past -- alive all around him, he believes, in the "medieval" streets of 20th century Fez. The Moroccans, or the "Moslems" as Stenham refers to them (with purpose), both attract and exasperate him with their fatalism (Mektoub, "it is written") and dogmatic faith in their God and their traditions. Stenham can affirm none of these things intellectually yet he envies the Moslems, if only because he yearns for such psychological comfort himself. In his unbelief ("It did not really matter whether they worshipped Allah or carburetors -- they were lost in any case"), Stenham also finds their medieval path superior because its aesthetic qualities appeal to him. The ugliness of the modern world, in both its Western and Soviet guises, pains him. Contemplating the factories and housing projects of the French colony, Stenham observes that the capitalist landscape looks no different from the communist one: "After all, he reflected, Communisim was merely a more virulent form of the same disease that was everywhere in the world. The world was indivisible and homogeneous; what happened in one place happened in another, political protestations to the contrary."

In the character of Amar, Bowles reveals Morocco through Moslem eyes. Here is where Bowles really shines. He doesn't tell, he shows: the unmistakable sign of a great writer. Unlike Stenham, Amar is comfortable in the world -- at least when we first meet him. There are believers and there are unbelievers. The certainty of this division and what it means forms the bedrock of Amar's identity. The French, or "Nazarenes" (Christians), are the enemies of the believers. The duty of the believer is to fight the unbeliever to the death. But when Amar crosses paths with members of the Istiqlal, the Moroccan nationalists, his certainties are shaken. Amar learns that the Istiqlal, like all political movements, uses religion for more worldly ends.

For Amar and Stenham, the promise of a political solution to human suffering (physical or existential) proves empty. Amar cannot reconcile the behavior of the Istiqlal -- killing fellow Moslems for political reasons -- to his faith, and he struggles with the idea that they are not the "purely defensive group of selfless martyrs" that he needs them to be. Stenham also hates the nationalists, but for different reasons. So long as he is comfortably outside the system, Stenham prefers Islam to modernization. As a former communist, he sees that the real enemies are the do-gooders and busybodies from the West preaching liberalism and communism. These are represented by the character of Polly Burroughs. "Hers was the attitude of the missionary," Stenham observes, "but whereas the missionary offers a complete if unusable code of thought, the modernizer offered nothing at all, save a place in the ranks. And the Moslems...now were going to be duped into joining the senseless march of universal brotherhood; for the privilege each man would give up only a small part of himself -- just enough to make him incomplete, so that instead of looking into his own heart, to Allah, for reassurance, he would have to look to others. The new world would be a triumph of frustration, where all humanity would be lifting itself by its own bootstraps -- the equality of the damned."

This book is not for the timid and it is a far more satisfying and mature work than the SHELTERING SKY. Bowles captures an unforgettable meeting between East and West. There is no "clash of civilizations", but neither is there the happy ending mandated by current liberal-multicultural fantasies. Written before the age of political correctness, THE SPIDER'S HOUSE offers a sympathetic yet honest -- and therefore disturbing -- view of Islam. But honest readers should also be disturbed by our own Western pieties. "Happy is the man who believes he is happy," says Stenham, "...and more accursed than the murderer is the man who works to destroy that belief."

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Castles Made of Sand, June 10, 2001

By 

Mr. Cairene (Cairo, Egypt) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spider's House (Paperback)

"The likeness of those who choose other patrons than Allah is as the likeness of the spider when she taketh unto herself a house, and lo! The frailest of all houses is the spider's house, if they but knew."

The Quran

Fragility. That is the defining quality of Paul Bowle's vivid illustration of Fez circa 1954. Or rather, the reverie of an unadorned, exotic place that vaguely resembles Fez. For the characters, the reality of the medieval city plagues that reverie. The Fez of the novel is at war. With the French occupiers, and the Istiqlal (independence) fighters upping the stakes, raising the level of brutality. In Bowles's explicitly detailed streets, alleyways, cafes, there are conspiring students and those who inform on them. Arrogant French soldiers and disdainful natives. Faithless Berber collaborators and angry Moroccan mobs. But Fez, fragile and frail its condition maybe, is not the subject of this book. It is the reverie of two relatively apolitical onlookers. The likeness of that reverie is that of a spider's house.

At the Merinides Palace resides John Stenham, an American writer who has been in Fez for several years at the time of his introduction. His mordant wit and ill-temper are that of man of shattered ideals. He is the type of pseudo-cynic, the reader senses, was once a romantic. His neighbor, and frequent companion, is Moss, an English businessman, who, like the American, is in Fez for ambiguous reasons. Their daily routine consists of silly little mind games, where Moss pretends to be a chaste of the orient, with Stenham as his acquainted guide. But Moss, we learn, is sly old bat. He is a millionaire, a true cynic whose cynicism has served him well. The writer's case is much graver than that.

Stenham is an ex-communist, with a fuzzy desire "to be saved". It makes sense that he did not choose Casablanca or Rabat, it is only Fez, the 9th century Islamic city, whose way of life might have seemed alien enough that it would poccess the attraction of an uncorrupted Utopia. He has learned to speak Arabic, learned the unspoken cultural rules of the Medina, but he has never connected with Moroccans. And he hopes he never has to. That would complicate the picture. But before The Spider's House turns into one of those condescending "Westerners in a strange land" stories, Bowles gives the tale a brilliant twist; He introduces Amar, a fifteen-year-old Fessian. Amar is a Cherif (his family lineage can be traced directly to the Prophet). That is not to say he is rich. In fact, his family lives in relative destitute, with his father's income as a healer proving barely adequate. He is illiterate, yet possesses an astounding faith. Amar is, for the most part, the primary protagonist of The Spider's House. And Bowles, an American, affords him such a singular, authentic world view that the novel takes on a whole new dimension. Amar, a character who is more resonant than the Westerner neither negates nor proves Stenham's asinine view of Moroccans. Yes, like Stenham, his vision of the world will be shattered by the end of the novel, but that vision is so far away from Stenham's, that it may seem reasonable to assume that the boy and man, Muslim and Nazarene (Western Christian), are separated by an unbridgeable divide.

It is a given that Amar's and Stenham's paths cross. What happens then, I will leave you to discover. Bowles, who has lived most of his life in Morroco, writes in a stately, elegant fashion. A style that is neither obtrusive nor bland. His theme is that way too; neither stated nor retracted. I don't think he endorses protagonists' view that they are so fundamentally different they can never communicate on equal terms. For Stenham, a Fez populated by people whose ambitions and hopes he can comprehend is tantamount to its destruction. Amar discovers that the world has "come nearer, but in coming nearer it had grown smaller. As if an enormous piece of a great puzzle had fallen unexpectedly into place, blocking the view of distant, beautiful countrysides," He has hit a black wall of certainty. In the beautifully subtle closing scene, one of them will reach out, the other will value his sand castle, his spider's house, too much for that.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You can't get there from here, February 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Spider's House (Paperback)

The gap in understanding between cultures, a theme of "The Sheltering Sky," is dramatized with brutal honesty in this novel set in Fez, Morocco during a 1954 nationalist uprising. Totally relevant to today's political situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations