Just finished The Sheltering Sky. First time reading Paul Bowles. Whats your opinion?It did a really great job at the feeling of alienation. Especially enjoyed Port.
>>24689946One of my favorites. That second half seriously fucks with me, the transition into it and Kit's subsequent evolution through to the end. Amazingly well done. Thematically speaking it is a bit of a one off for Bowles, his later novels are good but on the thin side.
>>24689961Thanks, I was considering reading more of Bowles after this. I've heard his short stories are wonderful however.
>>24689975The are still worth reading, some good insights but they don't quite coalesce, we end up with a few themes wrapped up in a plot that sort of unifies them but not really. He always offers something, but the worth of his later novels might be more about things like how to pace and plot a novel, which still tells us a great deal about the human condition, just a bit less direct about it. The way he builds tension and paces the second half of Let it Come Down more than makes up for it being a little limb when it comes to theme, can't think of a novel that doesn't better.
>>24689946I couldn’t finish it. It was super boring. This is the one with the dude and the chick and she’s a whore and like goes into the desert or some shit?
>>24690023>the human conditionwhy is this necessary? why do people try to enjoy stories based on how much of the experiences are shared by everyone? especially when a story needs to be told presumably because the experiences aren't shared by everyone?
>>24690088Most people alive these days never lived in the Tangiers International Zone or anything like it, if we don't relate the experience of the time and place through what is common and shared we will not be able to understand what it was like to be in that time and place. And using what is shared will inevitably explore it since it puts our understanding of these things into an alien context. You seem to be reducing things down to the shared experiences but the shared experiences are just things like puberty, love, loss, etc, the banalities of life and touchstones for understanding what is not shared.