Fiction. In these seven new stories Paul Bowles ranges widely in time, in form, and in geographic area-from Massachusetts to Morocco, from 1932 to the 1970s. Portraits and contemporary scenes mix conventional narration with experimental monologues, and the volume concludes with a tale presented as six letters written to a bitter, dying man. The formal versatility is as arresting as the content. The whole is proof (if it were needed) that, as Gore Vidal remarks, Bowle's art is as disturbing as ever.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bowles is convinced "that the human world has entered into a terminal period of disintegration and destruction." His pessimism is manifested in the common themes of these seven short storiesinsanity and death, both of which reflect "the decay of civilization." Despite their different settings, the tales are all obsessed with the deviant side of human behavior, be it torture, poisoning, vampirism, suicide, murder. Five of these pieces are set in Morocco, where a racist attitude toward the indigenous populations is apparent. Clearly, in Bowles's view, to these "uncivilized" people, death by violent means is the norm. European and American foreigners are at the mercy of the natives unless, as Bowles implies, they create their own separate enclaves apart from the Moslems. Insanity is the basis for most of these stories and, interestingly, is confined to women. Ten out of his 12 female characters are nagging, hysterical, mentally ill or suicidal, the doomed victims of weak psyches. Finally, it is noteworthy that three of the stories are compelling stream-of-consciousness monologues, a pleasant change from Bowles's (Points in Time, etc.) otherwise bland observations. The pieces originally appeared in Conjunctions and the Boston Globe, among others.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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