Home | Best Seller | FAQ | Contact Us
Browse
Art & Photography
Biographies & Autobiography
Body,Mind & Health
Business & Economics
Children's Book
Computers & Internet
Cooking
Crafts,Hobbies & Gardening
Entertainment
Family & Parenting
History
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Detective
Nonfiction
Professional & Technology
Reference
Religion
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports & Outdoors
Travel & Geography
   Book Info

enlarge picture

Too Far From Home: The Selected Writings of Paul Bowles  
Author: Paul Bowles
ISBN: 0880013915
Format: Handover
Publish Date: June, 2005
 
     
     
   Book Review


From Publishers Weekly
For serious students of Bowles and for rank neophytes, this collection is a good buy. For others, probably not. The volume includes the complete text of The Sheltering Sky and excerpts from three other novels; several stories from The Delicate Prey and other collections; a smattering of poems; travel writing from Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue ; some 50 pages from the autobiographical Without Stopping and another 20 from Days: Tangier Journal 1987-1989 and an interview with editor Halpern, whose brief preface recalls his early encounters with Bowles and their collaboration on the literary magazine Antaeus . There are also nine letters of a rather banausic turn, which may be why they have not been published until now. The main attraction is the title novella, written recently and first published here. It has all the makings of classic Bowles: an American brother and sister in Mali's Gao region face the country and themselves. But at some 35 pages, it is too short for Bowles to paint the cumulative portraits he is known for, and the dark fable at the story's heart is overwhelmed by such ultimately sterile devices as the sister's letters home and the brother's pseudo-flirtation with a French widow. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


About the Author
Paul Bowles was born in 1910 and studied music with composer Aaron Copland before moving toTangier, Morocco, with his wife, Jane. He remained in Morocco, and- it served as the inspiration for The Sheltering Sky, which waspublished in 1949. It was followed by TheDelicate Prey, Let It Come Down, The Spider'sHouse and Without Stopping, a memoir thatdescribes his legendary associations with members of the Beat Generation. Bowles's prolific career included many musical compositions, collections of short fiction, and books of traveland poetry and translations.




Too Far From Home: The Selected Writings of Paul Bowles

FROM OUR EDITORS

Includes the complete novel The Sheltering Sky, plus excerpts from several other novels, stories, poems, travel essays, journals, letters, and an interview with the writer conducted by Daniel Halpern in Tangier in 1970.

ANNOTATION

For over forty-five years, Paul Bowles has been one of this century's most enigmatic and intriguing writers, best known for his novel The Sheltering Sky. This striking collection highlights Bowles's undeniable virtuosity and brings together for the first time his finest work including a new unpublished novella, Too Far From Home, and previously unpublished letters.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Paul Bowles is one of this century's most enigmatic and intriguing writers. Best known for his novel The Sheltering Sky, he has for over forty-five years worked in a variety of genres, writing novels, stories, travel accounts, essays, poetry, journals, and autobiography, each distinctively shaped by his arresting vision and style. Since 1947 he has lived as an American expatriate in Tangier, Morocco, and his groundbreaking work has formed an important departure point for an international array of writers - most notably the Beats, whose literature and lifestyle he influenced greatly. Long heralded as a writer's writer and once considered primarily a literary cult figure, Bowles has in recent years been recognized as an original - an enduring visionary whose stark, often violent tales and dispassionate objectivity prefigured and shaped much of our current literary landscape. This striking and comprehensive collection documents the range of his influence and highlights his remarkable virtuosity, what Joyce Carol Oates calls "the rich and unexpectedly variegated achievement of a major American writer." First published in 1949 and included here in its entirety, The Sheltering Sky established Bowles as one of the most singular and promising of an extraordinary post-war generation of writers. His first collection of stories, The Delicate Prey, published in 1950, solidified that reputation. Too Far from Home: The Selected Writing of Paul Bowles is a testament to how forcefully and brilliantly he delivered on that early promise. Taking its title from a new novella published here for the first time, this volume also brings together a dozen of Bowles's best stories; excerpts from his three other novels, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House, and Up Above the World; excerpts from Points in Time, Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue, Days, and Without Stopping; as well as a group of poems, a selection of previously unpublished letters, and an interview conducted by

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

For serious students of Bowles and for rank neophytes, this collection is a good buy. For others, probably not. The volume includes the complete text of The Sheltering Sky and excerpts from three other novels; several stories from The Delicate Prey and other collections; a smattering of poems; travel writing from Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue ; some 50 pages from the autobiographical Without Stopping and another 20 from Days: Tangier Journal 1987-1989 and an interview with editor Halpern, whose brief preface recalls his early encounters with Bowles and their collaboration on the literary magazine Antaeus . There are also nine letters of a rather banausic turn, which may be why they have not been published until now. The main attraction is the title novella, written recently and first published here. It has all the makings of classic Bowles: an American brother and sister in Mali's Gao region face the country and themselves. But at some 35 pages, it is too short for Bowles to paint the cumulative portraits he is known for, and the dark fable at the story's heart is overwhelmed by such ultimately sterile devices as the sister's letters home and the brother's pseudo-flirtation with a French widow. (Feb.)

     



Home | Private Policy | Contact Us
@copyright 2001-2005 ReadingBee.com