The Stories of Paul Bowles

By: Paul Bowles

Narrated by: Mike Ortego, Raphael Corkhill

“Bowles’s tales are at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. They move with the inevitability of myth. His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own.” —Tobias Wolff

An American cult figure, Paul Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Tobias Wolff. From “The Delicate Prey” to “Too Far from Home,” this definitive collection celebrates the Bowles’s masterful artistry in short fiction.

©2010 Paul Bowles (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

Superb production of a superb anthology

Nearly all of the short stories (62 total) by one of the 20th century's great writers. At the end of this review, I highlight some of the best to start with.

NEW TO BOWLES?

Paul Bowles blends the precise minimalism of Hemingway with the brutality and strangeness of Cormac McCarthy. His characters labor under the delusion that they are in control of their lives, only to have that certitude gradually stripped away – or abruptly shattered.

Bowles' stories often reach a point that feels surreal because characters are faced with an extreme situation beyond their comprehension, yet his narratives rarely depart from reality. Instead, he walks you and his characters out to the edge of the precipice one step at a time – and then compels you to confront the abyss.

Many Americans are unfamiliar with Bowles (even though he's American) because he lived most of his life abroad, primarily in Morocco, but he's in the league of those writers who could have won a Nobel Prize yet never quite did.

His greatest works are the novel "The Sheltering Sky" and this anthology of his short stories, dating from the 1940s to the 1990s. I've read nearly all of Bowles' fiction and loved most of it, and either this anthology or that novel is a great starting point. (That said, "The Sheltering Sky" will always be my personal favorite; I've read it many times.)


FOR FANS

This may be his only story collection you need – it includes 62 stories, and as far as I can tell, it anthologizes all of his prior collections. It's the same edition as the corresponding print / kindle anthology.

That said, I believe I read once that he wrote more than 100 short stories (not sure about that), so for completists, you may have more to hunt, but I don't know the provenance of whatever's been omitted. Might be juvenalia and lesser work published in periodicals but never collected for a book?


AUDIO PRODUCTION & PERFORMANCE

These 62 stories are arranged chronologically in publication order, and Audible has done us the favor of using the story titles as the section headings in the audio file, so it's easy to jump around as you like.

In addition to the pleasure of its completeness and range, this audio version also brings exquisite performances from two sublime readers.

Amusingly, I didn't realize until 2/3 of the way through that it was 2 different readers – they sound enough alike that I still have no real sense of which reader performs each story or when they switch.

So why did they use 2 readers? My guess is that, given the extensive range of non-English words, accents, and dialects, they may have needed 2 people to cover the whole span. Most of Bowles' work is set either in North Africa, or Central and South America, with numerous European characters thrown in as well, but he also has a few stories set in other locales. That global range poses quite a challenge for any one reader.

Thankfully, the pronunciations are natural and vivid throughout, and the readers give virtually perfect performances from start to finish.

* NOTE: The audio sample is NOT of either reader. That is the book’s forward, written and (evidently) read by Robert Stone.


TOP 16 PICKS (in the order they appear):

1. The Echo
2. A Distant Episode *superb; one of his most famous
3. Call at Corazon
4. At Paso Rojo
5. How Many Midnights
6. The Delicate Prey *superb; one of his most famous
7. The Hours After Noon *+superb longer story
8. The Frozen Fields *a joy, and a departure from his normal style
9. Tapiama *superb
10. The Time of Friendship ++excellent long story
11. Reminders of Bouselham
12. Midnight Mass
13. You Have Left Your Lotus Pods on the Bus
14. In the Red Room
15. Tangier 1975
16. Too Far from Home ++excellent long story

More engaging than even Hemingway

Master of the short story, which is a personal favorite. That I missed or overlooked this writer for years is a disappointing, considering all of the time I’ve spent pursuing this form of literature. Bowles is magical in his craft. Be prepared: not at all the magic of Glinda the Good Witch but rather of the Jinn or Brujo loyal to his own.