From Library Journal
Though mostly associated with Tangiers, Bowles was born in Queens, NY, so his works qualify for inclusion in the Library of America. The publisher claims these are the first annotated editions of Bowles's works available. Along with the novels volume, Stories includes "The Delicate Prey," "A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard," "The Time of Friendship," "Things Gone and Things Still Here," "Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue," among many others. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Paul Bowles had already established himself as an important composer when at age 39 he published The Sheltering Sky and became recognized as one of the most powerful writers of the postwar period. From his base in Tangier he produced globally ranging novels, stories, and travel writings that set exquisite surfaces over violent undercurrents. His elegantly spare novels chart the unpredictable collisions between "civilized" exiles and a Morocco they never grasp, achieving effects of extreme horror and dislocation.
This Library of America Bowles set, the first annotated edition, offers the full range of his achievement: the portrait of an outsider who was one of the essential American writers of the last century. In addition to his novels-The Sheltering Sky (1949), Let It Come Down (1952), The Spider's House (1955), Up Above the World (1966)-and his collected stories-including such classics as "A Distant Episode" and "Pages from Cold Point"-they contain his masterpiece of travel writing, Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (1963). Throughout, Bowles shows himself a master of gothic terror and a diabolically funny observer of manners as well as a prescient guide to everything from the roots of Islamist politics to the world of Moghrebi music. With a hallucinatory clarity as dry and unforgiving as the desert air, Bowles sends his characters toward encounters with unknown and terrifying forces both outside them and within them.
About the Author
Daniel Halpern, editor, is the editorial director of Ecco and has published several books of poems, including Something Shining.
Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky/ Let It Come Down/ the Spider's House FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Paul Bowles had already established himself as an important American composer when, at the age of 38, he published The Sheltering Sky and became widely recognized as one of the most powerful writers of the postwar period. By the time of his death in 1999 he had become a unique and legendary figure in modern literary culture. From his base in Tangier he produced novels, stories, and travel writings in which exquisite surfaces and violent undercurrents mingle. Bowles - who once told an interviewer, "I've always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born" - charts the collisions between "civilized" exiles and unfamiliar societies that they can never really grasp. In fiction of slowly gathering menace, he achieves effects of horror and dislocation with an elegantly spare style and understated wit. This Library of America volume, containing his first three novels, with its companion Collected Stories and Later Writings, is the first annotated edition of Bowles' work, offering the full range of his literary achievement: the portrait of an outsider who was one of the essential American writers of the last half century." "The Sheltering Sky (1949), which remains Bowles' most celebrated work, describes the unraveling of a young, sophisticated, and adventuresome married couple as they make their way into the Sahara. In a prose style of meticulous calm and stunning visual precision, Bowles tracks Port and Kit Moresby on a journey through the desert that culminates in death and madness." "In Let It Come Down (1952), Bowles plots the doomed trajectory of Nelson Dyar, a New York bank teller who comes to Tangier in search of a different life and ends up giving in to this darkest impulses. Rich in descriptions of the corruption and decadence of the International Zone in the last days before Moroccan independence, Bowles' second novel is an alternately comic and horrific account of a descent into nihilism." The Spider's House (1955), the longest and most
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Though mostly associated with Tangiers, Bowles was born in Queens, NY, so his works qualify for inclusion in the Library of America. The publisher claims these are the first annotated editions of Bowles's works available. Along with the novels volume, Stories includes "The Delicate Prey," "A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard," "The Time of Friendship," "Things Gone and Things Still Here," "Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue," among many others. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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