Acquisitions (108): Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles: Up Above the World (1966)

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Paul Bowles (1910-1999)

Paul Bowles. Up Above the World (1966)
[Habitat ReStore North Shore, Wairau Park - 17/4/24]:

Paul Bowles. Up Above the World. 1966. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1991.

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Bernardo Bertolucci, dir.: The Sheltering Sky (1990)

The Sheltering Sky

My only knowledge of Paul Bowles used to be that he was head honcho among the expatriate American writers in Tangier when William Burroughs arrived there in the mid-1950s. This was shortly after the latter had shot his wife Joan through the head in Mexico City - a tragic accident, he claimed, but one which he might not have got away with scot-free if he hadn't skipped town shortly afterwards ...

It wasn't until I saw The Sheltering Sky that I really began to fall under Bowles's spell.

John Malkovich & Debra Winger in The Sheltering Sky (1990)

There was something so mesmerising about it: the landscape, the heat, the sultry magnificence of Debra Winger in surely one of her greatest roles ... "For you there is only the desert," as Anthony Quinn says to Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. The Sheltering Sky, too, is definitely a film for those in love with the desert.

Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky (1949)

I read the book shortly afterwards. I wasn't disappointed, exactly. It's a powerfully written novel, and I can understand why it caused such a sensation at the time. But it is very much a book of that time: the era of Sartre and Camus and the other Existentialists. The film seems to translate that into something more universal.

But Bertolucci's film too, is now 35 years old. Perhaps it seems just as archaic to viewers today: nostalgia for the 1990s is no doubt just as powerful a thing for the young as nostalgia for the 1940s, however absurd that might seem to members of my generation.

Perhaps Debra Winger sums it up best, in her tribute to the film-maker, recorded shortly after his death in 2018:

It was such an intense experience filming The Sheltering Sky. ...
But the moment of shooting the movie I remember most ... was when we were at the edge of the Sahara Desert. I was in the robes I was wearing in the film. He was wearing a black leather Armani jacket and a scarf. He was girding himself against the infinite qualities of the desert. We are standing on the edge of this untouched sand. You can see in the forefront of the photo all the footprints and the dolly tracks where the crew had walked.
Then there were these vast dunes — just nothingness. I was to walk out into that, and hopefully they were driving out around the dunes and picking me up at the other end, but there were to be no footprints in the sand. The shot was opening up very wide, and it was very scary because everyone understood that you cannot walk easily in the desert. You can go over a couple of dunes and think you have gone in a straight line. There was this moment where life and the art of making a film about it were coming up against each other.
I said: “I love it here. Whatever happens is OK. I love it. I love how small I am in the scheme of things.” He said, “That’s exactly why I hate this place.” He said to me, “I don’t even go to a party if it’s not for me.” Now the party is all about him.

- Benjamin Svetkey: "Debra Winger Remembers Bernardo Bertolucci".
Hollywood Reporter (27/11/18)

Malkovich & Winger in The Sheltering Sky (1990)

And then, of course, there's the Jane Bowles factor. It would not really be much of an exaggeration to refer to her the Frida Kahlo of American letters - a very gifted artist, initially overshadowed by her famous husband, but now definitely coming into her own.

Jane Bowles in New York

As you can tell from the photo above, Kit in the film of The Sheltering Sky is very closely modelled on Jane Bowles (the same can also be said of the character in her husband's book). In particular, Debra Winger's hair and general look were carefully sculpted to look as much as possible like the intensely photogenic Jane:

Debra Winger in The Sheltering Sky (1990)

There are some who would argue that Jane was the more important writer of the two. Which of them you prefer comes down not so much to matter of taste as a matter of temperament, I suspect. Jane's oblique, unsettling short stories are certainly great in themselves - but their fragmentary nature gives a clue to how much greater than that were her actual literary ambitions.

She completed one novel, Two Serious Ladies, and one play, The Summer House, but many of the notebook fragments sound like the openings of abandoned, large-scale works which she was never able to carry to a conclusion - possibly more for reasons of health than of existential self-doubt.

Judy Davis in Naked Lunch (1991)

Perhaps this side of her is better expressed in yet another film embodiment, David Cronenberg's adaptation of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, where Judy Davis plays a version of Jane Bowles as 'Joan Frost', the estranged wife of a local novelist in the baffling port town of Interzone (= Tangier). The passionate, masochistic affair Joan is conducting with a local woman closely echoes events in Jane's own life, seen through the mordant lense of Burroughs' dislocating prose.

I don't know what it says about me that it's still one of my favourite films. Despite the lukewarm response it got from the critics at the time, I think it's now recognised as a classic piece of alternative cinema.

Ian Holm & Judy Davis as a version of Paul & Jane Bowles
David Cronenberg, dir. Naked Lunch (1991)

Paul, by contrast, started off as a serious modernist composer, but gradually morphed into a novelist and short story writer. His work as a translator is also impressive: particularly the Moroccan authors - often personal friends - whom he was able to introduce to the larger world of letters.

Was he anything like the reckless, rather self-satisfied character played by John Malkovich in The Sheltering Sky? There are certainly some resemblances, but if it was meant as a self-portrait, it's an exaggerated and caricatured one. The point about Bowles seems to have been that he self-consciously cultivated a reputation as an enigma.

The editor of his selected letters, Jeffrey Miller, was shocked to discover after Bowles's death how intensely the writer disliked him and resented his poking around in his personal archive. He'd thought they were friends, but the letters said otherwise. Maybe it was just Bowles's last joke on him, though - after all, he could have hidden the fact much more carefully if he'd wanted to.

Perhaps they really were friends all along, but Bowles resented his complacency. Or perhaps ... but the possible scenarios are endless. That's really the mark of a Paul Bowles story: no matter how carefully you parse and analyse it, there's always something more concealed at its core.

Jane & Paul Bowles

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Jane Bowles in Morocco

Jane Bowles
[née Jane Sydney Auer]
(1917-1973)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Novels:


1. Two Serious Ladies (1943)
   • Two Serious Ladies. 1943. Introduction by Lorna Sage. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000.

Plays:


2. In the Summer House (1943)

Stories:


3. Everything is Nice: The Collected Stories (1984)
   Plain Pleasures:
   1. Plain Pleasures
   2. Everything is Nice
   3. A Guatemalan Idyll
   4. Camp Cataract
   5. A Day in the Open
   6. A Quarreling Pair
   7. A Stick of Green Candy
   Other Stories:
   8. Andrew
   9. Emmy Moore’s Journal
   10. Going to Massachusetts
   From the Notebooks:
   11. The Iron Table
   12. Lila and Frank
   13. Friday
   From the Threepenny Review:
   14. Looking for Lane
   15. Señorita Córdoba
   16. Laura and Sally
   • Everything is Nice: The Collected Stories. Introduction by Paul Bowles. 1984. Virago Modern Classics, 328. London: Virago Press Limited, 1989.

Collections:


4. The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles. Ed. Millicent Dillon (1994)
5. Collected Writings. Ed. Millicent Dillon (Library of America, 2016)
   1. Two Serious Ladies (1943)
   2. In the Summer House (1943)
   3. Stories and Other Writings:
      1. A Guatemalan Idyll
      2. A Day in the Open
      3. Song of an Old Woman
      4. Two Skies
      5. A Quarreling Pair
      6. Plain Pleasures
      7. Camp Cataract
      8. A Stick of Green Candy
      9. East Side: North Africa
   4. Scenes and Fragments:
      1. Señorita Córdoba
      2. Looking for Lane
      3. Laura and Sally
      4. Going to Massachusetts
      5. The Children’s Party
      6. Andrew
      7. Emmy Moore’s Journal
      8. Friday
      9. “Curls and a Quiet Country Face”
      10. Lila and Frank
      11. The Iron Table
      12. At the Jumping Bean
   5. Letters



Jane Bowles: Collected Writings (Library of America, 2016)




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Paul Bowles in Tangier

Paul Frederic Bowles
(1910-1991)



Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House (Library of America, 2002)


Novels:


1. The Sheltering Sky (1949)
   • The Sheltering Sky. 1949. Penguin 2947. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
2. Let It Come Down (1952)
   • Let It Come Down. 1952. Introduction by the Author. 1980. Afterword by Barnaby Rogerson. Penguin Modern Classics. London: Penguin, 2009.
3. The Spider's House (1955)
   • The Spider's House. 1955. Preface by the Author. 1982. Introduction by Francine Prose. Penguin Modern Classics. London: Penguin, 2009.
4. Up Above the World (1966)
   • Up Above the World. 1966. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1991.
5. The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House. Ed. Daniel Halpern, ed. Library of America (2002)

Stories:


1. The Scorpion (December 1945) [CS] [LoA]
2. The Echo (September 1946) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
3. By the Water (October 1946) [CS] [LoA]
4. A Distant Episode (Jan-Feb 1947) [CS] [LoA]
5. Under the Sky (June 1947) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
6. Call at Corazón (October 1947) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
7. You Are Not I (January 1948) [CS] [LoA]
8. At Paso Rojo (September 1948) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
9. Pastor Dowe at Tacaté (February 1949) [CS] [LoA]
10. The Delicate Prey (Summer 1949) [CS] [LoA]
11. Pages from Cold Point (Autumn 1949) [CS] [LoA]
12. Doña Faustina (1950) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
13. The Circular Valley (1950) [CS] [LoA]
14. The Fourth Day Out from Santa Cruz (1950) [CS] [LoA]
15. A Thousand Days for Mokhtar (1950) [CS] [LoA]
16. Tea on the Mountain (1950) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
17. How Many Midnights (April 1950) [CS] [LoA]
18. Señor Ong and Señor Ha (July 1950) [CS] [LoA]
19. A Gift for Kinza [aka The Successor] (March 1951) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
20. If I Should Open My Mouth (April 1954) [CS] [LoA]
21. The Hours After Noon (1956) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
22. The Frozen Fields (July 1957) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
23. Tapiama (May 1958) [CS] [LoA]
24. Sylvie Ann, The Boogie Man (1958) [CC]
25. He of the Assembly (1960) [CS] [LoA]
26. Merkala Beach [aka The Story of Lahcen and Idir] (October 1960) [CS] [LoA]
27. A Friend of the World (March 1961) [CS] [LoA]
28. The Hyena (Winter 1962) [CS] [LoA]
29. The Wind at Beni Midar (1962) [CS] [LoA]
30. The Garden (Autumn/Winter 1964) [CS] [LoA]
31. The Time of Friendship (1967) [CS] [LoA]
32. Afternoon with Antaeus (Summer 1970) [CS] [LoA]
33. Mejdoub (Spring/Summer 1974) [CS] [LoA]
34. The Fqih (Fall 1974) [CS] [LoA]
35. The Waters of Izli (1975) [CS] [LoA]
36. Things Gone and Things Still Here (January 1976) [CS] [LoA]
37. Istikhara, Anaya, Medagan and the Medaganat (Spring/Summer 1976) [CS] [LoA]
38. Allal (January 1977) [CS] [LoA]
39. Reminders of Bouselham (June 1977) [CS] [LoA]
40. You Have Left Your Lotus Pods on the Bus (1977) [CS] [LoA]
41. The Eye (Fall 1978) [LoA]
42. Here to Learn (Summer 1979) [LoA]
43. Midnight Mass (Winter 1979) [LoA]
44. The Dismissal (Spring 1980) [LoA]
45. Madame and Ahmed (Summer 1980) [LoA]
46. Kitty (Summer 1980) [LoA]
47. Bouayad and the Money (July 1980) [LoA]
48. The Husband (Winter 1980) [LoA]
49. At the Krungthep Plaza (Winter 1980-81) [LoA]
50. In the Red Room (1981) [LoA]
51. The Little House (Spring 1981) [LoA]
52. Rumor and a Ladder (Spring 1981) [LoA]
53. Monologue, Tangier 1975 (Spring 1981) [CC] [LoA]
54. Monologue, Massachusetts 1932 (Autumn 1983) [CC] [LoA]
55. The Empty Amulet (1985) [LoA]
56. Hugh Harper (Spring 1985) [CC]
57. Julian Vreden (Fall 1985)
58. An Inopportune Visit (1986) [CC]
59. Unwelcome Words (January–February 1987) [LoA]
60. In Absentia (Spring 1987) [CC] [LoA]
61. Monologue, New York 1965 (1988) [CC] [LoA]
62. Dinner at Sir Nigel's (1988) [CC]
63. Too Far from Home (1991) [LoA]

Story collections:


6. A Little Stone (1950)
7. The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950)
8. The Hours After Noon (1959)
9. A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard (1962)
10. The Time of Friendship (1967)
11. Pages from Cold Point and Other Stories (1968)
12. Three Tales (1975)
13. Things Gone and Things Still Here (1977)
14. Collected Stories, 1939–1976 (1979) [CS]
    • Collected Stories 1939-1976. Introduction by Gore Vidal. 1979. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1990.
15. In the Red Room (1981)
16. Midnight Mass (1981)
17. Points in Time (1982)
18. Unwelcome Words: Seven Stories (1988)
19. A Distant Episode: Selected Stories (1988)
20. Call at Corazon (1988) [CC]
    • Call at Corazón and Other Stories. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1989.
21. A Thousand Days for Mokhtar (1989)
22. Too Far From Home (1991)
23. [with Vittorio Santoro] Time of Friendship (1995)
24. The Stories of Paul Bowles (2001)
25. Collected Stories and Later Writings. Ed. Daniel Halpern, ed. Library of America (2002) [LoA]

Travel:


26. [with Peter W. Haeberlin] Yallah (1957)
27. Their Heads are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (1963)
28. 17, Quai Voltaire: Paris, 1931-1932 (1993)
    • Included in: Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993. Ed. Mark Ellingham. Ecco. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
29. [with Simon Bischoff] How Could I Send a Picture into the Desert? (1994)
30. Travels: Collected Writings, 1950–1993. Ed. Mark Ellingham (2010)
    • Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993. Chronology by Daniel Halpern. 2002. Ed. Mark Ellingham. Introduction by Paul Theroux. Ecco. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.

Autobiography:


31. Without Stopping (1972)
32. Two Years Beside The Strait (1990)
33. Days: Tangier Journal (1991)

Plays:


34. The Garden (1967)

Poetry:


35. Two Poems (1933)
36. Scenes (1968)
37. The Thicket of Spring (1972)
38. Next to Nothing: Collected Poems, 1926–1977 (1981)
39. No Eye Looked Out from Any Crevice (1997)

Collections:


40. Paul Bowles: Selected Songs. Ed. Peter Garland (1984)
41. Too Far from Home. Ed. Daniel Halpern (1993)
42. Paul Bowles: Music. Ed. Claudia Swan (1995)
43. The Paul Bowles Reader (2000)

Letters:


44. In Touch – The Letters of Paul Bowles. Ed. Jeffrey Miller (1993)
    • In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles. Ed. Jeffrey Miller. 1993. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
45. Dear Paul - Dear Ned: The Correspondence of Paul Bowles and Ned Rorem (1997)

Translations:


46. Jean-Paul Sartre: No Exit (1946)
47. Roger Frison-Roche: The Lost Trail of the Sahara (1952)
48. Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi [Larbi Layachi]: A Life Full Of Holes (1964)
49. Mohammed Mrabet: Love with a Few Hairs (1967)
50. Mohammed Mrabet: The Lemon (1969)
51. Mohammed Mrabet: M'Hashish (1969)
52. Mohamed Choukri: For Bread Alone (1973)
53. Mohamed Choukri: Jean Genet in Tangier (1973)
54. Mohammed Mrabet: The Boy Who Set the Fire (1974)
55. Mohammed Mrabet: Hadidan Aharam (1975)
56. Isabelle Eberhardt: The Oblivion Seekers (1975)
57. Mohammed Mrabet: Look & Move On (1976)
58. Mohammed Mrabet: Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins (1976)
59. Mohammed Mrabet: The Big Mirror (1977)
60. Mohamed Choukri: Tennessee Williams in Tangier (1979)
61. "Five Eyes" by Abdeslam Boulaich, "Sheheriar and Sheherazade" by Mohamed Choukri, "The Half Brothers" by Larbi Layachi, "The Lute" by Mohammed Mrabet, and "The Night Before Thinking" by Ahmed Yacoubi (1979)
62. Mohammed Mrabet: The Beach Café & The Voice (1980)
63. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Path Doubles Back (1982)
64. Mohammed Mrabet: The Chest (1983)
65. Pociao: Allal (1983)
66. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The River Bed (1984)
67. She Woke Me Up So I Killed Her: 16 authors' short stories from various languages (1985)
68. Mohammed Mrabet: Marriage With Papers (1986)
69. Translations from the Moghrebi: by various authors (1986)
70. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Beggar's Knife (1988)
71. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: Dust on Her Tongue (1989)
72. Mohammed Mrabet: The Storyteller and the Fisherman [CD] (1990)
73. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Pelcari Project (1991)
74. Jellel Gasteli: Tanger: Vues Choisies (1991)
75. Chocolate Creams and Dollars: by various authors (1992)
76. Mohammed Mrabet: Collected Stories (2004)



Paul Bowles: Collected Stories & Later Writings (Library of America, 2002)




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• category - American Fiction: Authors


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