Word: bowleses
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Paul Bowles is a Renaissance man born into an age that applauds specialization. Doing several things very well indeed has, paradoxically, brought him less public acclaim than he might have received had he stuck to one. Bowles, 68, has been a distinguished composer; in 1947 Musician Virgil Thomson called him...
Collected Stories: 1939-1976 provides a chance to isolate and trace one strand of Bowles' remarkable career. The book's 39 tales are not only worth reading on their own, but their assembly should dispel several myths that have grown up around Bowles' work. First, spreading his...
The essential Bowles plot charts a clash between two cultures, one usually Western and the other primitive. Primitive almost always gets the home court advantage; Bowles favors settings in North Africa, near the deadly lure of the Sahara, or in stifling, vegetation-choked places in Mexico or South America. Visitors...
Bowles' outsiders can be predators as well as victims. A city woman in At Paso Rojo visits her brother's ranch and makes a pass at one of his Indian employees; he loses his job as a consequence. After causing this injustice, the woman "shrugged her shoulders, got...
One Bowles character jots down a "recipe for dissolving the impression of hideousness made by a thing: Fix the attention upon the given object or situation so that the various elements, all familiar, will regroup themselves. Frightfulness is never more than an unfamiliar pattern." Bowles may believe this, but his...