In Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, three still-young Americans travel to the post WWII North African desert in search of themselves and new experiences.
Port and Kit Moresby, in the tenth year of marriage, have become both sexually and emotionally estranged, and Port hopes their sojourn into the desert will bring them closer together and restore the love they once shared. Kit, not so keen on either the desert or Port, has nevertheless agreed to Port's wishes, albeit reluctantly. The third person in their party, their friend, George Tunner, accompanies them more on a whim than anything else.
Seeking the exotic, the trio really doesn't know what to do with it when they find it. The sun is too bright, the labyrinth of city streets too dark, the excess of sensual delights a surfeit that imprisons rather than frees.
Becoming more and more dissatisfied with both themselves and with those around them, they decide to leave the restrictiveness of the city behind and venture farther south, into the wild, harsh, dazzling beauty of the Sahara. They meet the Lyles, ostensibly mother and son, who claim to be writing a travel book but whose real business appears to be far more sinister, much like the duo's own obsessive Freudian tangles.
Port, who at first, found himself drawn inexorably to the beauty and remoteness of the Sahara, soon becomes violently ill and dies, and Kit, grateful to be rescued by a passing, enigmatic Arab, finds that things are not always as they seem. Her rescuer becomes her imprisoner, and as the sun grows ever brighter, the shadows grow deeper. The bizarre eventually becomes so real that Kit gradually and terrifyingly loses what fragile grip on reality she once possessed.
Although The Sheltering Sky may, on the surface, seem like a lurid and melodramatic tale, it is anything but. A masterpiece of understatement, plot is always secondary to theme in Bowles' writing; the real changes take place in the minds of the characters who must face an immensity of experience they cannot even hope to understand much less prepare themselves for.
The indifference of nature and the unforgiving quality of the desert also play a huge part in this story. The book could be a metaphor for the meaninglessness of most 20th century relationships. Port and Kit's journey into the heart of the Sahara mirrors our own journey into the depths of the soul and we either come back altered forever (Kit) or we don't come back at all (Port). It is significant that Tunner, more superficial in both his outlook and psychological makeup, fails to make the journey into the depths of the desert and, as such, he remains untouched by it. He emerges essentially the same as he was when the story began.
The Sheltering Sky could have been a character study, but Bowles wisely eschews this venue. Although we gain flashes of insight into each character, we really don't get to know them in-depth. An existential novel, the characters in The Sheltering Sky are more symbolic than fully-formed, fleshed-out people. In a highly thematic book, however, this is exactly as it should be, and Bowles never fails to manipulate his characters with anything less than sheer perfection.
The inner emptiness of the characters is emphasized by the incompleteness of their emotional experiences. Every time Port or Kit seem to be on the verge of discovering a deeper connection, to themselves or to each other, Bowles pulls the chair out from under the reader. The scene that best typifies this lack of depth is Kit's as she spends her final moments with Port following his death: "Softly she laid her cheek on the pillow and stroked his hair. No tears flowed, it was a silent leave-taking. A strangely intense buzzing in front of her made her open her eyes. She watched fascinated while two flies made their brief, frantic love on his lower lip."
Although The Sheltering Sky is, for the most part, written in beautifully understated prose (the vivid place descriptions are the exception), there is nothing subtle about its message. And, while one emerges from this strange and complex novel as if from a dream, a little reflection makes it clear that our dreams can so easily become our nightmares.
The real setting of The Sheltering Sky is not the vast, uncharted Sahara, but the vast, uncharted reaches of the modern soul. Like Bowles' characters, we won't find the journey to the depths an easy one, but if we are going to do more than live on the periphery of life we should, however, find the journey necessary.
Polished to perfection in every way, The Sheltering Sky is the strangest, and most strangely familiar, book I've read in a long, long time.
