The Sheltering Sky

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Summary: Alienation in the Sahara
Review: "The Sheltering Sky" is ostensibly a book about the sojourn of three American travellers (Port, Kit & Tunner) in the Sahara desert. As alienation and a growing sense of incomprehension take hold of and tighten their grip on the travellers' psyche, they fall victim to the strange cruelty of the desert which takes on the role of the antagonist in this travellers' tale. It is tempting to imagine that the all-enveloping and terrifying vastness of the Sahara is the root cause of their troubled psychological state. If this reflects the conventional reading of the novel, I beg to differ. I found all three principal characters cold, edgy, unhappy and ultimately selfish. There is no genuine communication in their human contact. A pervading sense of alienation clouds their private thoughts and deliberation. The condescending attitude of the colonialists (including the Lyles and the French officials) towards the natives and outsiders is all the more ironical when it becomes apparant that the latter (eg, the old Jewish couple) is capable of basic human kindness which the colonialists cannot even begin to comprehend. Despite the long descriptive passages and occasional denseness of Bowles' prose, I found the novel a mesmerising read. It is a clearly a literary landmark and one that deserves to be read over and over again.

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Summary: Hypnotic-Succumb To The Heat!
Review: Quite a blend of madness, infidelity and travel guide! I read this book in the middle of a "heat wave" in the Midwest. Maybe reading in the dead of winter would have changed my perception of being in a dreamlike state when I finished this book (two days) but I am inclined to think this might not be the case. The book almost causes you to lose track of time like Kit does in the last half of the book. Each of the three sections seems almost to exist on its' own; yet the connections always remain. Each time you read this book (you WILL want to read it over and over) you will find that it almost seems as if you become the person experiencing Africa and the desert.

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Summary: Utterly compelling
Review: The first chapter of this book is, in my opinion, one of the great pieces of twentieth century writing. It is no more than a couple of pages but it is so overwhelming that I had to put the book down after reading it. This book is gripping, terrifying and unsettling. It is unequalled in its portrayal of alienation and, indeed, depression. It is extraordinary its intuition. Paul Bowles should be recognised as one of the great writers in English and, I believe, in time he will be.

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Summary: My Favorite novel
Review: I am essentially a reader. I've spent countless hours reading in my life, and my my career is (can you guess?) librarian. Take my word for it, this book is fabulous. Bowles can transport you. You won't look at life the same way after reading this book. It's beautiful and searing, going straight to a truth like an arrow to a target. It's magic.

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Summary: Disturbing!
Review: This book left me wanting more. I was hoping for a more definitive ending, but was left hanging. The book was one I did not want to put down.

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Summary: Nightmare
Review: I disliked the characters so much that at one point I wanted them to all die. Nothing really happens in the story. But, when I woke from the reading, my world was in a haze. I don't know what Bowles does to make you feel like that, but this book creates an atmosphere. It makes you hallucinate. It's a rare book that can do that.

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Summary: wonderful, haunting, sad and passionate
Review: This book is incredibly poetic and disturbingly real. It's full of missed moments, lost conversations and mountains built upon shaky assumptions. The ability to communicate, with others as well as with oneself, is the center of this maelstrom. Passionate and disturbing, I highly recommend this book.

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Summary: Excellent!
Review: wonderfully descriptive. knowledgeabl

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Summary: Bowles' Sahara: A Place Where Naturalism and The Gothic Meet
Review: A superb read and a fascinating study of the industrialized world as seen from the other side. When I say "the other side" I'm speaking of the desert. For in the end, it is that haunting landscape which shapes the lives of everyone in the novel. The Arabs and the native peoples have long been shaped by it, but the travelers who have come from America (the most hyper-industrialized nation on earth)do not have the advantage of customs and bodies which have been conditioned over thousands of years to cope with such a harsh environment. Bowles is at his strongest when he delves into the description of settings. Few writers after WWII have even come close. I'm reminded of Thomas Hardy's dexterity, but Hardy was of a different time, when you could afford to spend one whole page describing the shape of a wagon wheel. Bowles does not have this luxury because his readers simply do not have the patience to wade through such dense prose. Perhaps this is part of the reason he excels when describing the Sahara's alien splendor: it is of itself a sparing place, unforgiving and brutal. As a young, ambitious writer, Bowles asked Gertrude Stein where he should go to write and she suggested Morroco. Of course, Bowles was followed by a great many other writers; he and Jane staked out the territory and Burroughs, Ginsberg, etc, etc. followed. It's certainly understandable why. How could any writer in the 1950s stay away after reading a masterpiece like The Sheltering Sky? At the time, it was the antithesis of all things Industrial--a bastion of the ancient world. Even today, while Hemingway's style becomes more and more tiresome, Bowles keeps growing in both popularity and critical acclaim. You can see how he and Hemingway came from the same era, but Bowles chose the road less traveled, moving to Africa instead of a war-torn Europe. Even today, his style and subject matter remain fresh in the disturbing clarity of his vision. Indeed, the face of a sand dune may change from day to day, but its expression remains essentially the same. After reading The Sheltering Sky, you will never look at the desert in quite the same way again.

Kirk Edward Sigurdson [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Loved it - but read it under the right conditions.
Review: Several years ago, I picked this book up on a whim and within a day or two, Minnesota experienced a late spring heat wave (80s and 90s). I got sick with a fever, and it was under these perfect conditions I was transported by Paul Bowles to Northern Africa. I loved the book. The irrational decisions the characters chose made perfect sense to a reader with a high fever, and the desert landscape reflected my own parched state of mind. Someday I'll have to read it when I am in good health to see if it was really as good as my fevered mind thought.