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Overview
A Distant Episode contains the best of Paul Bowles's short stories, as selected by the author. An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay McInerney.
Synopsis
A Distant Episode contains the best of Paul Bowles's short stories, as selected by the author. An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay McInerney.
Library Journal
A noted composer and novelist, Bowles has won widest acclaim for his short stories. The selection he has made here stretches from The Delicate Prey ( LJ 11/15/50) through Unwelcome Words (Tombouctou, 1988) and adds two uncollected stories. Most utilize a Third World setting (Latin America, Sri Lanka, North Africa) to dramatize the bankruptcy of Western values. Though later works are less extreme in their violence, the title story is typical: a linguistics professor laden with ``maps, sun lotions and medicines'' is relieved of his tongue and his senses by the tribe he would study. Bowles has emerged as one of our most important contemporary writers, and academic and public libraries not already holding several of his collections will want this volume. Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.