BOOK
#42

The Sheltering Sky
by Paul Bowles





Review by Edward Tanguay
July 24, 1996

Nice book. This will give me something to think about for awhile: the desert, the concept of time, life, searching for for a meaning and self, lack of hope, being trapped inside yourself, hopeless relationships, disgust, revulsion . . . the fascinating aspect of this book is that Bowles' choice of barren desert background with often revolting third-world, physical conditions nicely plays into his ideas of the hopelessness of modern relationships to each other and to ourselves.

Although this book takes place fully in the desert and in desert towns, you never feel a lack of description, but rather a vivid plethora:

As he moved along cautiously under the trees he became aware that at each step he was crushing something beneath his feet. The ground was covered with large insects; their hard shells broke with little explosions that were quite audible to him even amidst the noise the dogs were making. It smelled of mint and woodsmoke. The light of the moon was violent--walking along the white street in it was like being in sunlight. During the middle of the day it was no longer the sun alone that persecuted from above--the entire sky was like a metal dome grown white with heat. The merciless light pushed down from all directions; the sun was the whole sky.

The abnormal and grotesque qualities of the things seen in the desert gave a dreamlike sensation to this book, such as the cats with "tiny heads and huge ears" and hairless "pink dogs" and the little negro boy with the protruding belly and bulging eyes, with his "grimacing reptilian face" that Kit stared at "with increasing terror." There was also enough in this book to make a strong stomach turn, such as the weevils in the soup, and this:

"You can put up with this sort of thing for just so long. Then you go crazy," said Kit. She had found patches of fur in her rabbit stew, and unfortunately the light in that part of the patio was so dim that she had not made the discovery until after she had put the food into her mouth." The man leaning against the wall beside her was also eating--small dark objects which he kept taking out of the hood of his garment and crunching noisily. With a faint shudder she saw that they were red locusts with the legs and heads removed.

Bowles makes good use of analogies to describe certain connotations that otherwise would not be present:

Once inside the tent, she stood quite still, looking at Port with something of the expression, he thought, the young bull often wears as he takes the first few steps into the glare of the arena.

And with subtle use of language, he describes events with more than the meanings of words, but the sounds of words and word associations. For example, the following innocently describes Kit and Tunner lying together in the train compartment, but notice his use of rhythm and sensuous words which hint of a much higher physical intimacy between the two:

"No one's going to open the door." he kissed her. Over and over in her head she heard the slow wheels on the rails saying: "Not NOW not now, not NOW not now . . . " And underneath she imagined the deep chasms in the rain, swollen with water. She reached up and caressed the back of his head, but she said nothing.

I like to read Bowles' writing. After he describes something, you feel as though you understand that one aspect which you can only experience if you are were there, but Bowles is able to give it to you in writing:

Now, going into the gloomy little room, Port was midly surprised to see sitting alone at the bar a heavy-looking youth with a formless face which was saved from complete non-existence by an undefined brown beard. Port allowed him to continue his discourse, which presently left banking behind and went into personal experiences. This terrain was more fertile; it obviously was where the young man had been heading from the start. Port offered no comments, save for an occasional polite exclamation which helped to give the monologue the semblance of a conversation.

About half way through the book I began to read the whole story as a journey into the meaningless 20th century soul, basically as "desert = soul" and "physical journey = psychological journey." Both Kit and Port are searching and both penetrate this vast, meaningless void only to end up dead and in deep trouble, respectively. Tunner, who has a superficial character, seems to hover around the edge of the desert. Reading it from this perspective, Port's death and Kit's bizarre and psychological transformation in the desert pool led to interesting existential ideas, for instance, the peace of realizing your own existence as finite, and peace in the face of an utter lack of hope. Kit's journey into the desert is similar to some people's journey into their souls. They come back out, but they come out thoroughly altered from their experiences. And then, some people don't come back out at all, like Port. Notice that the superficial Tunner is the one who never really likes the desert but he is never really touched or harmed by it. When viewed in this way, the story carries many interesting analogies, such as loss of Port's passport being the loss of identity.

Lyle and his mother (or was that only an alibi?) were comical reliefs and were able to take part a little in the plot, for instance, by stealing the passports. But I don't feel I really ever knew these characters or any of the characters in this book. I read the characters in this book as being more symbolic for something else rather than characters in their own right and hence I don't feel like I

could really describe any of them. They seemed to all come from Bowles from a single pattern, as if they were all variants of one class of people, people searching for something, perhaps like Bowles himself, like those with him in Tangier.

Although I don't see any of the characters in this book as fully formed, Bowles gave bits of description of the three characters that was insightful in a general sense. For instance, Tunner:

. . . caught a glimpse of himself as he stood bent over a suitcase, and smiled inscrutably at his image; it was the same smile that Kit thought so false.

It shows us a very empty-souled person. Even his real emotions are seen by others as false. And there was one good description of Kit which tries to identify the conflict she has between reason and her superstitions:

On these days of doom friends who knew her well would say "Oh, this is one of Kit's days." If on these days she was subdued and seemed most reasonable, it was only because she was imitating mechanically what she considered rational behaviour. One reason she had such a strong dislike of hearing dreams recounted was that the telling of them brought straightway to her attention the struggle that raged in her--the war between reason and atavism. In intellectual discussions she was always the proponent of scientific method; at the same time itwas inevitable that she should reagard the dream as an omen.

The concept of time is also given a work over in this book. I liked the quote by the Arab that his people looked at life like climbing a cliff, don't look down or you will get sick. The book is pervaded by a sense of finite time, that the seconds which are ticking past will never return:

One never took the time to savour the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

Paul Bowles will not let you have any complete emotions in this book. Each time he begins a scene where you might feel satisfaction in terms of experiencing Port and Kit feel real love for each other or for either of them to discover some real meaning for themselves, Bowles pulls the chair out from under you, seemingly saying "there is no deep meaning." The best scene of this type is Kit's going away where she spends some meaningful moments touching Port for the last time and giving him one last good-bye kiss before she leaves his body in the room:

Softly she laid her cheek on the pillow and stroked his hair. No tears flowed; it was a silent leave-taking. A strangely intense buzzing in front of her made her open her eyes. She watched fascinated while two flies made their brief, frantic love on his lower lip.

This book is full of juicy existential quotes, like this one:

As he walked along the hot road toward the walls of Bou Noura he kept his head down, seeing nothing but the dust and the thousands of small sharp stones. He did not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear. It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking.

or this one during a discussion about life:

Port laughed abruptly. "And now you know [life]'s not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it's nearly burned down to the end. And then's when you're conscious of the bitter taste.

And any existential book will talk about death, as Kit sits and thinks after finding Port dead:

As the minutes went by, she felt no impulse to move; no thought wandered near her. Now she did not remember there many conversations built around the idea of death, perhaps because no idea about death has anything in common with the presence of death.

Although this was a strange book, it was also strangely familiar. I wouldn't say that the setting of this book was the Moroccan desert but rather in our dry, empty modern souls. The issues and ideas that Bowles touches in this book are very real and much nearer to home than Africa.

Edward Tanguay


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