About book The Delicate Prey And Other Stories (2006)
The Delicate Prey, yeah, and they are, but I had a feeling that if I could peak out of the corner of my eye when no one was looking that I would see a predator licking someone else's blood off their own paws. They would curl into a tired ball after a fit of violence they wouldn't have wanted to help, you know? Dream of chases and far off screams and it wouldn't seem any more real than the heat coming off the ground in waves. Never mind the no one looking part. The predator would wrap itself in a blanket and put itself right at your feet. These stories are creepy in the way that a mother might feel if she had given birth to a monster. Involving, you know, in a should be familiar to you way, because you said hello to it and gave it food, and instead it is something you would never want to recognize. A monster that doesn't know it's a monster. A monster that acts within its own instinctual code. You're not its concern. You're food.I didn't like Paul Bowles at all when I was younger. I have a hard time remembering when I read some things (I have always read a lot, even when I didn't actively seek out books to read) but, considering that there was a film version (not a good film) starring John Malkovich, it was probably some time in my late teen years. That's close enough to my timeline. I'm not going to try to read my own mind from way back when. It was probably something like "Boring!" Paul Bowles is not boring. He is a come up from beind you writer. Dammit, I hate it when I get self conscious in reviews. I never know how to describe prose styles or narrative or .... Um, I'm pretty useless at all that, anyway, and does anyone look to me for that? I doubt it. Okay, the usual thing. I know I'm a monster. You can hate me for it later.The thing is the thing when I write about some of my favorite stories in the collection, or stories that I won't struggle as much to write about (pretty much everything is just great). There are 17 stories and no way am I doing all of them. No, I don't hear you crying. Tough! (I'm also too lazy to do the proper accent marks. Will my barbarism never cease?)at pasa rojo.Sisters Chalia and Lucia have never married while their mother was alive. Garbed in frontierswoman breeches and what a fun new life, respectively, they retire to their brother's estate. I am not Paul Bowles so my description is some Hollywood actor's version of a ranch. Don Federico is affably the man with the money, saving everybody blah blah blah. You know what I said about vipers who don't want to see themselves as vipers? Chalia tastes her first taste of sexuality with one of those lower on the food chain oh so lucky to work under Rico. Maybe they were, comparitively, but it is still their word against theirs and it can't be fun to be "lucky". It is chilling that Chalia sleeps like the innocent baby when getting to have her way and keep the image she wants to have. I don't think Rico will continue to be one of the better ones if he sees them as "lucky" to have him and Chalia as in a right above place... I really did like that aspect maybe the best of all in Bowles's stories. It is something I've noticed in people when they've hurt someone else. They would cry if they bruised their hand after throwing a punch. It's just the bit of reality that a story of monsters needs, you know?Okay, I started writing the above review days ago and then I got sick of it. Reviewing short stories collections is a pain in the ass! I've had a JG Ballard review unfinished for ages. (I didn't even get that far for Bowles. Sorry, Bowles! I've treated your wife even worse.)My favorites were the echo and you are not i. A mother turns on her daughter on an invited vacation and she has dreams of the unfairness of it all violence. Kicking someone in and the worst fantasy you could give in it to. Pretty much how I feel about my nemesis the turtle, sometimes. It would be nice... No! No, it would be wrong. Besides, he has that hard turtle shell. (Wrong...) "For a while during her childhood this fear of having no mental privacy had been extended to anyone, even persons existing at a distance could have access to her mind."That's me. Shit. I have tried to empty my mind of all thought so many times in case anyone could mind read. Not that I do that now! I mean me younger, like Aileen in the echo story. Of course that's what I meant!"Now she felt open only to those present. And so it was that, finding herself face to face with Prue, she was conscious of no particular emotion save the familiar vague sense of boredom. There was not a thought in her head, and her face made the fact apparent."I dig the way that Bowles writes things. He could dig your body into the ground with only your ears sticking out and then the bad prey would eat you alive. Ruthless thought reflections that sound more terrible bouncing off mountain like shit of bad expectations and social disorders. you are not i a woman escapes from a mental institution and her sister ends up in her place, doing the things that her sister did. I had a feeling that the crazy sister still didn't become the not crazy sister so you are not i could be we are not i. She did go around putting stones in the mouths of the train crash victims. What would that be for if people put money on eyelids to pay for the trip across the river styx? To weight down in the river and a price of silence?I read some old New York Times article from some author I've never heard of when this collection originally came out (1950). The dude criticiszed Bowles for writing about foriegn places like Mexico and Morrocco. I don't get it. Every monster in all places are not foriegn to themselves.I don't remember now which story had the rapist who thought he could pay the woman off afterwards. Or the slutty son who could not be contained on a deserted island for father and son. (I wish I could read this stuff and not start to worry about my own monster tendencies. Keeping wild animals as pets and his setting his own free, but without looking inside the cage and only to protect it.) Definitely had that delicate monster feeling here. Anyway, I like Bowles an awful lot now. Janes Bowles too. I also read some other author's blog posts about both of their short stories (she didn't have much to say. Uh oh, now I feel bad about skimping here too!). The lady said that call at corazon was autobiographical, according to Bowles. if it was I have a hard time believing it was about Jane. Revenge? I guess you don't "know" an author through their writing but the feeling I have about Janes Bowles from what I read about her isn't that. She is as much about trying to peer into the veins under skin for the true look as he. I could see them staring at each other. Besides, if they were passionate it wasn't about each other, from what I know about them. I don't really want to know. I am happy relating to the second guess thing. I liked (just review Jane, Mariel!) about Two Serious Ladies how Miss Goering admits to every damned thing about herself. I relate to that! I like these two admitting shit authors. Monsters know they are monsters and they fear it.I liked every story a lot. You could be afraid of everything.p.s.My copy is some old ugly copy and not a pretty new copy with the camel and Gore Vidal's Bowles essay. I think that Gore Vidal has the same taste as me in American writers. He's been coming up constantly these days. He sure did love Paul Bowles. (Truman Capote, champion of Jane, he did not love. Noooo, how can you not love my beloved Truman? That's why you don't try to find out about the personal lives of your favorite authors. Vidal couldn't deal with bitchy Capote. Eyes seeing better than looking into eyes. Monsters hiding in closet. I don't care. I'm pretty sure he knew himself even if he was fake as shit in society.)
There's no doubt about it--Paul Bowles is a gorgeously brutal writer who can place a phrase like a land mine and build narratives as stealthy and deadly as a ninja attack. It's easy to see why writers like Norman Mailer and Tobias Wolff have praised his work so highly, and this is definitely a collection that makes an unforgettable impact, for better and worse. Unfortunately for me, that impact was too often for the worse. The first three stories in the collection were a bit slow going in terms of the subject matter and characters--Bowles's stories are like a spare, barely-felt slice of a razor blade, where you only realize how deep and deadly the cut is after it's been delivered. When this works, the effect is astonishing, but this style too often left me wanting something more in terms of the themes and characters. Then came the story "The Circular Valley," which for me was not only the stand-out of the entire collection, but one of the best short stories I've read in some time. The ancient spirit that inhabits a monastery as well as the souls of those who pass through it is one of the best modern Gothic stories that most people probably haven't read. After that the collection really picks up steam with the devastating portrayal of a relationship implosion and the consequences in "The Fourth Day Out from Santa Cruz;" the subtly sinister tale of sexuality run amok--or not--in "Pages from Cold Point," which called to mind Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer; and the fascinating gaze into the perhaps not so mad mind of madness in "You Are Not I," my second favorite story in the collection. The next four stories slowed things down again and suffered the same elements I disliked about the early stories, but I was definitely still enjoying the collection... and then came "The Delicate Prey" and "A Distant Episode," both of which for me were marred by graphic descriptions of absolutely savage acts of violence. In general I don't enjoy graphically violent writing, but depending on the context or larger themes, such scenes won't cause me to dislike a work overall. These stories, however, just went too far with the violence with too little else to sustain me. That's an entirely personal opinion, of course, and readers who don't mind or enjoy that kind of spare, brutal writing should certainly give Bowles's collection a read. For me, however, the stories in the middle are the only stand-outs, I can either take or leave the less engaging but still enjoyable stories that form the bulk of the book, and I'd just as soon forget I ever encountered the last two. One thing about Paul Bowles, though, at least based on this collection--he's not a writer whose stories one is inclined to forget--for better and worse. Favorite Quotes: "A length of time has passed; days which I am content to have known, even if now they are over. I think that this period was what I had always been waiting for life to offer, the recompense I had unconsciously but firmly expected, in return for having been held so closely in the grip of existence all these years." "Again I felt the fascination of complete helplessness that comes when one is suddenly a conscious onlooker at the shaping of one's fate."--Pages from Cold Point
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Sparse and sinister tales make-up this collection of Bowle's darker fiction. Full of quiet menace, each tales paints a different shade of alienation - whether it's in Latin America, Morocco or Manhattan, each exposes individuals on the precipice of some life-changing (life-threatening) moment. He wisely grazes the surface and leaves much to the imagination, but others (including the brutal 'A Distant Episode') goes for the throat. From the era of the late 40s, early 50's, Bowles tales are right up there with Daphne Du Maurier's. Well-to-do tourists be warned next time you try to integrate yourself into a culture that doesn't want to welcome you.
—Graham P
