In Touch – Paul Bowles

In my review of The Delicate Prey I wrote that its depiction of acts of extreme cruelty made me think there was something warped in Bowle’s nature. The three novels of his that I read were also dark. Yet in these letters (540 pages of them) no twisted personality emerges. He makes a few remarks that indicate a state of alienation from people and from himself, but he seems quite able to relate to others and to sustain friendships over many years. Of course, his constant wanderings to exotic places and his choosing Tangier as his home are not something most boys born in New York City do. He wasn’t like most boys; he was gifted both as a writer and a composer. But, as regards his writing, his creative resources dried up after a less than a decade of productivity; though he continued to publish odds and ends for much of his long life, it was just for the money. He smoked kif on a daily basis (he claimed that it acted as an anesthetic to dull feelings that he found unbearable), and possibly that dampened the creative spark. He married Jane Auer (Jane Bowles, the writer). I know, from sources other than this book, that he was a homosexual, she was a lesbian. Exclusively? – I can’t say, but I doubt that they had a sex life together. Though he corresponds with just about every gay man in the arts – from Aaron Copeland (an early friend and sponsor) to Tennessee Williams – he says almost nothing about his sex life; on one occasion he writes that it has been “largely imaginary,” and, as for whom he had been in bed with, he states “To answer that, it would be necessary to have known their names.” So what were his feelings toward Jane? He ends his letters to her with “much love” (though “love” is a closing he uses to many people), and signs off with the name “Bupple” (which he uses only for her). Still, there’s little affection on display in the letters themselves. Jane went through a an agonizing sixteen year period of physical and mental deterioration; it’s chronicled pretty thoroughly, and it’s a frightening story. Paul obviously cares, and does what he can to help (which includes spending a lot of money). In order to write this review I’ve had to glean for interesting tidbits, so I’ll close with a Bowles’ quote that indicates the lack of revealing that’s present in his correspondence: “It seems to me that a good letter has to have the smell of the personality of the one who writes it. And I think my eagerness to avoid leaving any such smell is the same, whether it is a letter or a novel or whatever. Don’t risk giving offense with halitosis or B. O. !”

Abigail – Magda Szabo (Hungarian)

In one aspect, this is a Girl-Goes-To-Boarding School novel. The girl is Gina, the school is the ultra-strict Bishop Matula Academy located in a remote part of Hungary. She’s very unhappy about being sent there (early-on she makes an attempt to escape), and at first she alienates the other girls; they retaliate by ostracizing her. Eventually matters are patched up, and they become close. All this is OK, and I found the suffocating religiosity of the school to be interesting, as were the efforts of the girls to garner some enjoyment from their constricted lives. But there’s a whole other issue introduced. WWII is in full swing, and her father, a general, is at odds with the ruling faction; if his opponents could get their hands on his daughter they could blackmail him, so he wants her in the fortress-like school to protect her from danger. This espionage/suspense element is labored and strung-out. After it took precedence I kept on reading only to find out (in print, not in my mind) the solution to the mystery of Abigail. Abigail is a statue, and is able to solve the problems of the girls, either by causing things to happen or by written out advice (or in commands). Of course, Gina knows that a human being is doing these things, and she tries to figure out who it might be. The most unlikely candidate, in Gina’s mind, is one of the teachers, a Mr. Konig, who she considers to be weak and odious. Why she despises this person was not clear to me (and, since it seemed both unfair and uncharitable, it didn’t reflect well on Gina). But, at any rate, as soon as the mystery was posed I knew that Konig was Abigail, and, in the book’s last sentence, my belief was confirmed. This is no spoiler simply because there was no mystery – which reflects the amateurish, clumsy construction on the part of Szabo. Abigail was published as a New York Review Book (as was Transit, reviewed in the previous batch). They seem to have taken on a speciality: foreign writers. This is laudable, but only as long as the works are excellent.  Some books on their list that I’m familiar with belong in that category, but not this one.

The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnin

There are three acts to this novel, and the first one was engaging. It has two women who live in dreary London responding to a newspaper ad for the rental of a “small mediaeval castle on the shores of the Mediterranean.” The women – Lottie and Rose – are unhappy with their lives (particularly their married lives). In order to defray expenses they get two others to join them – an older lady named Mrs. Martin and the very beautiful Lady Caroline. None of these women had known each other before this joint venture. The second act is about the arrival and first week of the month’s stay – and this has a charm, because the place is paradise. But paradise alone can’t sustain interest, so Arnin introduces some complications. Lady Caroline and Mrs. Martin aren’t able to give up their past hang-ups, and therefore don’t succumb to the beauty around them. And Lottie and Rose begin to long for their  husbands. Since these men were a major source of their unhappiness, I found this dubious. As I read on much of what was happening was simply manipulation; things got progressively worse until there were no real people in real situations – just an author using her characters as props and moving the scenery around. The last act has three men arriving at the castle – the two husbands and the owner of the place – and here the novel descends into mushy emotionalism. We get a sweepingly happy ending (love conquers all), but one so contrived and false that I found myself reading, with disgruntlement, a woman’s romance. A high quality one, but that’s not saying much. 

An odd occurrence: I discovered, after reading this entire novel and writing the review above, that I had read it before (in May of 2016). I did – especially in the beginning – find it vaguely familiar, but five years isn’t that long ago. Makes me wonder about myself. . . . Anyway, below is the review I did after the first reading. It is much richer and more comprehensive than  the one I did now, in my dotage. I think I’ve become somewhat tired of reading novels that I don’t care for and writing reviews about them. 

The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim

A woman lunching in her London club reads an ad in The Times addressed “To Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine.” An Italian castle is to be let for the month of April. Mrs. Wilkins (Lottie) notices another woman staring at the same page. Eventually the two – strangers, both unhappily married and dissatisfied with their lives – decide to take the plunge. To defray expenses, they recruit an elderly widow, cranky and stuck in the past, and a young woman who is so gorgeous that men are mesmerized by her. (Caroline yearns to get away from all the “grabbers” in the world.) In Italy the four women are immersed in the stunning natural beauty. For Lottie it’s transforming: she sees life in an altogether different light (a rose-colored one), and the force of her feelings affects the others. Well into this novel I was caught up by an invigorating sense of escapism. But when men (the two husbands and the owner of the castle) enter the picture, reality set in. At least it did for me; the author tries to keep up the Lottie fantasy that Love can induce a radical change in everybody. I couldn’t accept that Mr. Wilkins will cease to be a tyrant, nor that Caroline would warm up to a grabber like Mr. Briggs. Unlikely complications proliferate, and the gentle humor is replaced by slapstick. What had been quietly uplifting becomes doggedly instructive; to assert the primacy of Love makes it seem simplistic and sappy. When you like a book, then it falls apart, one feels betrayed. So I was in a bad mood when I read the introduction by Cathleen Schine. She raises the possibility that some characters are based on real people from the author’s life: “The Enchanted April’s sweetly ardent Mr. Biggs, owner of the castello, is, in his search for a mothering sort of love, based on Frere.” For one thing, the man’s name is Briggs, and he’s so smitten with young Caroline that he’s hardly able to function; he’s certainly not after any mothering.

The Delicate Prey and Other Stories - Paul Bowles

This collection contains Bowles’ first published fiction. I had previously read (and didn’t reread) “A Distant Episode.” The cruelty in that story left a lasting – and disturbing – impression on me. “The Delicate Prey” is almost as bad (castration, live burial of a man so only his head is exposed). These acts are described in an offhand manner, as if the perpetrators found them as pleasurable and inconsequential as having a good meal. But it’s the author who conveys that attitude, which makes me think there was something warped in Bowles’ nature. Despite my feelings of aversion, I have to acknowledge his talent; the stories cited above are effective because they’re done with skill. But in this collection we mostly get the warped sensibility minus the skill; some stories offer up their aberrations in a slipshod way. Of the ones I read (half I didn’t) only “You Are Not I” and “Pages from Cold Point” were interesting. “Pages” deals with homosexuality, a subject the author usually avoided (or dodged). Any relationship between people in Bowles’ work is devoid of a positive form of intimacy; cruelty, not love, was his specialty. He almost always used a foreign setting. Bowles lived most of his life in Morocco – a place where, I suspect, he was free to indulge his questionable tastes to the fullest.

The Bitter Box - Eleanor Clark

The extreme oddity of this novel kept me off balance. At first I thought it was badly written. But I kept reading because there was something compelling in the story of Mr. Temple. Eventually it dawned on me that Clark knew exactly what she was doing. She puts us in the mind of a very odd man and makes us see and feel things as he does. Mr. Temple is isolated, socially inept, repressed, emotionally unstable. This instability is precariously close to insanity (of the dangerous sort; rage is one of the emotions he has long repressed). On the first page he impulsively leaves the bank where he worked as a teller for over a decade; he’s driven from his cage onto the city streets by an urge inexplicable to him. Much is inexplicable to him. His mind latches onto images (some blossom into the ominous or the beautiful), his conversations are disjointed, his responses to people and events come in fits and starts. This is confusing (too confusing for me at times, even though confusion is what Mr. Temple feels). His flight from the bank – he’ll return the next day – is an interruption of a regimented life which he can no longer tolerate. His experiences in the following months are especially intense because, at age thirty-one, he has experienced very little. Mr. Temple is on a journey into the murky depths of himself; the journey doesn’t end up any place good. A dismal death seems imminent for him, and his inability to comprehend his nature persists – though on the last page there’s a suggestion that he may have achieved some insight. Maybe. I was never on solid footing with this novel, but I was caught up in the emotions. That’s Eleanor Clark’s accomplishment: to make me care about the strange Mr. Temple.

The Comforters - Muriel Spark

When I began this novel I knew it was Spark’s first, but after I finished it I discovered that she wrote it when she was thirty-nine. Thirty-nine! I thought she was in her early twenties; this isn’t a mature work. She relies on characters that range from peculiar to extravagantly bizarre (there’s a witch, folks, a real witch). The three main threads of plot are never woven together. One character hears voices that repeat her thoughts and words; we’re to believe that the book we’re reading is being produced by this disembodied source. Spark can’t make sense of what she proposes, so it’s total nonsense. Then there’s a sweet old grandmother who’s head of a ring of diamond smugglers; I felt I was back sleuthing with the Hardy Boys. The relationship between a young man and woman is chaste; Spark avoids a subject that was always a problem for her: love and sex (after reading enough of an author’s work you get to know them). Also in the mix is Catholicism, though the emphasis is on diabolism. The prose has a nice sparkle and the book moves along in a pleasant way – if, like the author, you ignore the improbabilities (which extend to the title; I have no idea what it’s referring to). I was blessed by starting out with two excellent books by Spark (Momento Mori and The Bachelors); the string of novels I read after those were either diverting or disappointing. This was interrupted by the lightning stroke of The Driver’s Seat, which may reveal more about Ms. Spark than anything else she wrote.

The Spider’s House - Paul Bowles

This should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand the Moslem mind. Young Amar is a wonderful character – replete with flaws, but real. While one can relate to him, his way of thinking in some important aspects is just plain different from that of a Westerner, and Bowles captures that difference extremely well. This, and the exotic atmosphere of Morocco, are the main virtues of the book. Bowles is less successful with his two Americans – the prose gets verbose and there’s too much thinking of deep thoughts. The sudden “romance” that flares up between Stenham and Lee was pure baloney. She hates his guts (the reader can understand why) and then suddenly, with no good reason, she’s madly in love with him. Motivation is missing! The author couldn’t follow up on his own reversal – there’s not one intimate scene between the two. Bowles, despite all the talent in the world, always managed to botch things up, usually in his endings. However, this time the last chapter is strong. And, as I said, Amar is wonderful and the cultural/political issues this novel explores are relevant today.

The Complete Stories of Bernard Malamud

I had greater respect for Malamud before I read this collection. Many stories are mediocre, some are downright bad – sloppy, pointless. He experiments with the bizarre quite often – always unsuccessfully. And his crudity in handling sex was hard to stomach. “The Magic Barrel” is still magic, and stories that capture the life of the small Jewish shop owner are good; but, all in all, this is a big disappointment.

Goodbye, Columbus - Philip Roth

The title novella introduced a writer with a bright, fresh voice. Roth captures the glow of young love – no easy task. One needs to create an appealing female character, and Roth definitely does that in the person of Brenda Patimkin. I liked her better than the conflicted Neil. There’s humor in this book (much of it provided by the colorful Patimkin clan) and it doesn’t have a boring page. Faults? The ending – I thought Roth sabotaged the affair with the business about the diaphragm (a case of the author tinkering with a plot line to achieve a goal). I also never believed that Neil was going to be a librarian, mainly because I took Neil to be Roth. It was Roth who was putting a bittersweet end to his summer love affair so that he could move on to bigger things. The novella is accompanied by five stories. None are totally successful. “Eli, the Fanatic” is a mess, floundering on much too long; it needed severe editing. Roth includes Jewishness as part of all the work in the book, but especially in the shorter pieces, where it’s at the core; I think this narrows and detracts. The stories are little more than padding – it’s Goodbye, Columbus that matters. *

The Chateau - William Maxwell
I’ve always thought that, as a writer, Maxwell had something special. That special quality is at the core of this novel. It presents a married couple on vacation in France; the man relates their experiences, observations, conversations – all the little and large events that occur. It’s pleasant enough, interesting enough. But what matters, underlying everything, is that this is a book about love. Harold and Barbara are inseparable – one is not complete without the other. The word “love” is not bandied about, but it’s implicit on every page. And there’s more. Maxwell (who is Harold) is aware of what he has; he’s also aware of the other side of life: loneliness, loss, depression (Maxwell didn't marry until he was 37). So there’s an appreciation of joy and a recognition of sadness. In The Chateau the author and his wife relive something precious to them, and Maxwell lets us share it. *

Kafka’s Other Trial - Elias Canetti (German)
In this book Canetti studies, with his stressful, nitpicking intensity, the letters Kafka wrote to Felice. I could only read half the book, then skimmed the rest. What struck me forcefully is how miserable Kafka was and how he tried to make others miserable (poor Felice). I suppose one can see his work as the only redeeming element in all the suffering. I was left disturbed and depressed.

Lucy - Jamaica Kincaid
I disliked Lucy. Maybe I have a problem with women being so blunt, especially when it comes to sexual matters (such as Lucy’s having sex with two men in the same day, with no compunction – ugh). Since we’re in her mind, we get a big dose of Lucy (Lucifer – and she likes that name). She’s selfish, extremely self-absorbed, depressed, ungrateful (she’s blessed in her circumstances – blessed!). She acts badly, has errant emotions that are mean-spirited, and she blames it all on her overpowering mother. On the last page she’s weeping about wanting so much to love someone, but she didn’t devote one lousy sentence in the book to the four little girls she was au pair to. Spare me your tears, I thought. Still – here’s the rub: my strong response shows how honest a writer Kincaid is; surely she knew what a bad impression she was making, but she did it anyway. I was left wondering about Lucy: did she grow up to become a decent person; did she get the love she wanted; did she relinquish her consuming hatred for her mother?

Unwelcome Words - Paul Bowles
Bowles dabbles at the typewriter, working over his old themes: world-weary sophistication, depravity, ornate cruelty. Yet he writes well, and he does have an ingrained world view, an alarmingly bleak one. The last story, which seems to be real letters written by him, is nastily effective – unwelcome words indeed!

Persuasion - Jane Austen
I never finished it; the interest wasn’t there. The main character, Ann, was too Miss Perfect. Maybe Austen identified with her and thus kept piling up the excellencies of character. Also, the prose is difficult in that you can lose your line of thought in its prolonged intricacies. The author has a good touch with humor, and she can satirize people’s foibles nicely, but there wasn’t enough of that and too much of the cloying Ann.

Let It Come Down - Paul Bowles
I had quite enough of Bowles when I finished this novel. He can do so many things well – create interesting characters, scenes, dialogue, mood. The exotic setting (Morocco) was especially good. Yet he can’t make sense of it all. He stays, at length, in his main character’s thoughts, but that mind is muddled from hashish. Bowles moves the plot along in fits and starts; he has people act in unlikely ways, abandons characters and lines of action which he’s spent much time developing. Bowles may be lazy or hashish-addled himself; at any rate, he seems incapable of sustaining logic. What he can do – and does often (I’ve read three of his novels and some stories) – is come up with some really repugnant cruelty at the end.

The Sixth Day - Primo Levi (Italian)
Levi is a chemist, and in this book he takes intriguing scientific ideas and develops them, making a quick, solid point and stopping. Almost all these pieces succeed in what they set out to do: they make one see the world in a fresh light. It’s not Levi’s aim to develop characters or plot, so the main lack of this book – for a reader like me – is its absence of people involved in situations I could relate to. Levi was not a novelist; the closest he came to writing one was The Monkey’s Wrench – and that’s wonderful.

The Sins of the Fathers - Lawrence Block
A private eye novel of the dark, brooding variety, about sordid matters. The writing is pared down, efficiently simple, but the first person voice is too unemotional. It comes across as artificial: the world-weary PI. Not that this book isn’t well done – it all works, even the revelation at the end is plausible – but I read reluctantly, not really enjoying it, not caught up in the events, and wondering if a guilty pleasure should be more pleasurable.

The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead
This unique novel sets its own standards and is driven by a passion that sweeps aside all reservations; I accepted its extremeness, its histrionic edge. The prose is initially difficult, but its intricate rhythms are accessible. In Stead’s portrayal of a weirdly dysfunctional family no one is wholly attractive, no one can be labeled as a villain; everyone is too complex to classify or dismiss. This novel sprang unbridled from the best place – somewhere deep inside the author. It’s a great achievement. *