Bowles Books

Once you enter the smoky world of Bowles' winding alleys and doublespeaking faux guides, you won't remember how to get back to where you were before. Was is this turn? Behind that door?

There are many reasons to read Paul Bowles. One is for the strange atmospheres he describes, another is for the fragile, delicate and easily dissembled egos of his protaganists. A typical Bowles story introduces you to all of these elements at once, one playing or preying on the other. In these stories we see the unraveling of identity after identity and the impression that builds as one moves from one story to another is that there is nothing that can save this from happening to the unprotected or unsheltered westerner whose identity structure disintegrates so easily when divorced from the western setting it is so reliant on. This pattern is also evident in his famous novel Sheltering Sky, a document of one man seeking dissolution in the desert, the fact that he is with a wife and a friend only underline his inability to desire anything, he simply seeks to journey away from everything. In Bowles stories (which take place in both South American and North African settings) the westerner, often an American, is seen as an unwanted invader by the natives of the visited region. The anti-colonial sentiment is there in these stories but Bowles' westerners seem to be the only ones unaware of it. But that is just one aspect of these stories, each story also has at least one other unsavory aspect as well(murder, incest, rape, drugs). The natives of Bowles foreign locales are usually not given much in the way of individual identities, it is the westerners who are singled out for study, the stories take place in their minds and thought processes. The foreign locales serve merely as backdrops, though very atmospheric writing makes those backdrops part of these stories appeal. Bowles' westerners are all met at a time in their lives when they are at a breaking point(Echo)or seeking departure from the past(Pages From Cold Point), or a spouse (Call at Corazon). We see a missionary in one story slowly give up hope of ever communicating to the natives he wishes to convert, in fact he is more changed by the natives than they are by him(Pastor Dowe at Tacate). In another a photographer with insomnia, a very common ailment in these stories, finds himself responding in some strange way to his surroundings, he begins to let his surroundings speak to some deeper instinctual part of him, and he slowly gives over his old identity to it, but letting his gaurd down has only made him less careful and more vulnerable to those who see him as one who is somewhere he does not belong(Tapiama)and that can never lead to any good especially not in a Bowles story. These stories will remind readers more of Poe, a favorite of Bowles, than any of the colonial or postcolonial authors because the element in his fiction that stands out most is the instability of western identity which makes it ripe for corruption. These characters are not so much seeking to arrive somewhere as escape from whence they came so really the places these sometimes horrific dramas occur in are less important than the people to whom these horrors occur. Bowles did spend his entire writing career in North Africa and South America so the stories are rich with details but they remain settings merely, however elaborate.

After reading Paul Bowles "The Sheltering Sky" twice, I could not consume enough of his writing. He was to me, a writer's writer. He has a way of pulling you into his adventures without overloading you with minute useless details. His writing just flows from sentence to sentence while the reader is swept away effortlessly along whatever path he is taking. Obviously I am a big fan and having this huge collection of short stories was something I had to have for my Paul Bowles collection. Also check out "My Sister's Hand In Mine" a collection of short stories written by Paul Bowles wife, Jane Bowles, it's equally intriguing. What a fasinating life they must have had!

A beautiful collection that certainly beats the old reliable Black Sparrow book. This is a class treatment of one of the best writers working the middle part of the century. (The intro is not particulary illuminating, however.) The lengthy review here by Doug Anderson gets the job done if you are new to Bowles. What strikes one upon revisiting Bowles is how contemporary he was in tone. These are hard-edged stories, dark and mysterious. World literature. A must collection for any serious reader of 20th century writing.

This collection certifies Bowles brilliance. I have enjoyed his novels, but these fascinating short stories reveal him to be one of the greatest American writers of the century, perhaps the most under-rated American writer. I like the fact that his stories are often set in exotic locals like Morocco, S. America, Mexico, and Thailand. He is also good with stories about expats as well as those written form the point of view of locals, some of these stories comes across like parables.

There are several memorable stories, but "A Distant Episode" in particular is brilliant. It's about an ethnologist who goes to study a distant tribe and is drugged fed mushrooms, has his tongue cut out and made to dance before the tribe. His later stories lose none of his precision in story telling either; it is a solid body of work. Highly recommended, however buy the paperback it's a bit of a doorstop at 657 pages.

I am 14 years of age, and thought this book was excellent. Any Versace fan would love this. The book is so bright with beautiful Miami inspired colors, very artistic illustrations, and wonderful pictures of his great creative designs. Though this is only up to his 1994 designs, it shows many of his best of all time. In this book, there are pages of his designs, theater designs,and more. This book is great. You never get bored when either reading the few pages to read, or when you are looking at the pictures and illustrations. It is a must have for the fashion lover, especially for the Gianni fan.

I am 14 years of age, and thought this book was excellent. Any Versace fan would love this. The book is so bright with beautiful Miami inspired colors, very artistic illustrations, and wonderful pictures of his great creative designs. Though this is only up to his 1994 designs, it shows many of his best of all time. In this book, there are pages of his designs, theater designs,and more. This book is great. You never get bored when either reading the few pages to read, or when you are looking at the pictures and illustrations. It is a must have for the fashion lover, especially for the Gianni fan.

"From the theatrical to the whimsical, Gianni Versace's designs have something for everyone. On these pages, his sketches and finished works of haute couture, ready-to-wear, accessories, jewelry, and opera and ballet costumes as well as artworks created by and for Versace are interpreted by top photographers such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Bruce Weber. The pictures are accompanied by three very different kinds of writing: commentary by Hamish Bowles, Style Editor of American Vogue; a new short story by Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti, an Italian journalist and award-winning novelist; and a text by Lady Julia Trevelyan Oman."

Gianni Versace - just the name brings to mind visions of high fashion, haute couture, incredibly beautiful fabrics swishing by on colt-like mannequins with arched eyebrows and the highest cheekbones. Vanitas: Designs is glamour between covers as it presents the designs, ready-to-wear, accessories, jewelry and costumes by Versace.

The almost 300 folio-size, full-page startlingly colorful picturers are accompanied by texts penned by Hamish Bowles, Lady Julia Trevelyan Oman, Andre Leon Talley, and Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti. Quotes by Versace enliven the already quick paced commentary.

The section on embroidery, from buttonholes to ball gowns, features garments decorated with threads of gold and silver, bugle beads, all reflecting Versace's eye for the imaginatively stunning.

Here is a beautiful, bold, sometimes brash collection of some of the most opulent designs in our world of fashion.

- Gail Cooke

This is my favorite book on Gianni Versace! It does an excellent job of showing excellent examples of the beautiful embellishments that make Versace what it is...SPECTACULAR. The art work is beautiful and the full color pictures are why this book is on my cofee table. It sums up Versace's work wonderfully!

A fabulous collection by one of the better fiction writers from this century. If you are new to Bowles, this is an excellent way to dig in and see and what he is about. East/West cultural differences, bizarre mysticism and brutality are some of the main ideas explored here with his characteristic almost dead-pan descriptions that are both beautiful and brutal in their honesty. Learn why he has been cited as one of the best writers by everyone from the Beats to Raymond Carver. Set apart from them all in Africa, he still managed to influence all of them in major ways. Open it and enjoy.

I love the stories of Paul Bowles. One of the few writers which spins a web of magic around his short stories without overdosing in adjectives. The worlds of bowles are often drawn in pure, brutal, indegenious colours, which you can nearly smell and taste when you read them. Many stories of him play in morocco (or south america), and if you want to learn something of these exciting countries and the culture, this is one of the best sources. It shows how much we can try to feel at home at foreign places and yet seldom succeed. Always in our head,ethoncentristic with friendship as the only real link to the other world. Bowles stories often leave me breathless at the end. They build up so much hope, so much plasticity and leave you nothing when you turn the last page. But even if the aftertaste seems to be a bitter one, you get enchanted, you read the next story, you want more. Then something after ten or fifteen books you can't wait to take the next plane to Africa... In some sense Bowles can be related to the Beat literature. The only thing is that Bowles didn't move on. He stayed in Tanger and his view of the world got much sharper than the one of the other beats. His protagonists still like to travel, they are searching for something, but what they find is beyond their dreams. It is naked realism and so strong that the mind begins to spin... (Look for P.B - Let it come down) LIGHT A CANDLE, READ A SHORT STORY OF THIS MARVELOUS COLLECTION AND WATCH FOR RESULTS...

If the short story "garden" will not enchanten you you probably are in desperate need of some of that moroccon majoun.

D.Mehring

This book, along with Gore Vidal's incredible introduction, led to a revitalization of the work of Paul Bowles. For far too long most of this work languished in out of print obscurity. But a sentence such as "His short stories are among the best ever written by an American" from the likes of Gore Vidal helped raise eyebrows along with intrigue. New versions of Bowles' work began to appear in the 1980s and eventually led to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1990 film of Bowles' most famous novel, "The Sheltering Sky". Bowles thus had the privilege of being rediscovered late in life (he died in Morocco in 1999 at age 88).

Bowles lived in Morocco for the vast majority of his life. An accomplished composer (trained by Aaron Copland in his youth) and writer, he remained and remains somewhat obscure (or as Vidal puts it "famous among those who were famous"). He writes mostly about non-european cultures, particularly Arabic or Islamic. Many times he said that he wrote from the subconscious; as though he wasn't aware of what he wrote. Some of the stories such as "The Scorpion", "By the Water" (featuring the surreal creature Lazrag), and "You Are Not I" (with its mindboggling midscene character shift) read as though the words did fall from some other dimension. Other stories seem to bear the marks of solid planning, such as "Call at Corazón" (a portrait of a rather unsuccessful marriage unfolding on a South American river), "Under the Sky" ("you are saving your friend's life"), "How Many Midnights" (a surprisingly standard story about a young couple), the nearly epic "The Hours After Noon" (where impressions and reality do not meet), and "Tea on the Mountain" (a very early story). Regardless of how Bowles wrote them, they all share a common undertow of terror of an Edgar Allen Poe style (Bowles once claimed in an interview that his mother read Poe to him before bed(!!!)). Bowles often gets credited for successfully depicting the threads that civilzation hangs on. And the terrors that await beneath the surface.

Some of Bowles' most brilliant creations stem from europeans attempting to infiltrate non-european cultures. "A Distant Episode" tells the disturbing story of a linguist captured by a Moroccan clan who violently turn him into a jester-esque fool. "Pastor Dowe at Tacaté" tells the story of a South American missionary that ends up "bribing" a group of people into hearing scripture by playing the song "Crazy Rhythm" on a victrola. He becomes too successful. In a gesture of thanks the leader of the group offers his very young daughter to the pastor. Which wasn't exactly what the pastor had in mind. The fantastic "The Time of Friendship" depicts the attempts of a German woman to "Christianize" a young Muslim boy. She memorably builds him a crèche. And he memorably doesn't respond to it the way she hopes. Bowles has an uncanny ability to portray the confusion and frustration of clashing cultures without making either side look ridiculous or inferior. When he writes tragic stories about people getting mistreated or misunderstood in other cultures, it never comes across as spiteful or racist. It seems strangely sympathetic regardless of the pain or horrors depicted. "The Delicate Prey" probably stands as the best example of this. It's downright disturbing. And violently sadistic. In such ways, Bowles' fiction actually teaches us about facing other cultures, and the problems and potential terrors that can arise if one "gets lost". Although he also presents a humorous example with the late story "You Have Left Your Lotus Pods on the Bus". Here a westerner spends the day with a group of Thai Buddhist monks ("What is the significance of the necktie?").

This collection presents a great overiew of the bulk of Bowles' short story output. The thick meaty stories of the 1940s gradually give way to the lighter stories of the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1970s many of the stories run only a few pages. But they maintain their intensity. "Allal" ends the book brilliantly with the story of a boy who enters the psychic perspective of a colorful snake. It evokes the same mood as the gorgeous earlier story "The Circular Valley" in which a spirit (an "Atlájala") enters a couple in love and storms off with disgust.

With the possible exception of the four kif-inspiried stories from the 1960s this collection offers up no disappointments. It demonstrates Bowles at his best. Anyone curious about this still rather obscure writer can start with this book. It includes most of Bowles' most acclaimed work. And at the end readers will likely wonder how this innovative storyteller continues to remain in the shadows of obscurity.

At his best, Bowles is rarely matched as a short story writer (A Distant Episode, The Frozen Fields, Pastor Dowe at Tacate, The Time of Friendship, The Delicate Prey, etc.). Precise, detached prose which often sustains a terrifying and revealing intensity of atmosphere. Any fans of "horror" would love this, though much of the terror is implied, psychological. There's also a few 4-5 pg. hallucinogenic (sp?) pieces which don't do much for me. Well worth reading. And reading (have read A Distant Episode three times).

Writing a screenplay requires understanding specific formatting rules, especially if you intend to try and have that screenplay sold or produced. I have just ventured into writing screenplays and this book certainly helps answer a lot of basic questions of formatting. Beyond the basics, it also gives advanced and varied options to communicate ideas. The use of examples is very helpful. At the end, common errors are reviewed and corrected in various ways. It is a book that helps you use the format to most effectively communicate your ideas. Certainly good to have has a reference once you get acclimated to the structure.

This book is definitely the best screenwriting manual on the market, and anyone who dreams -- even in their wildest imagination -- that they might someday want to write a screenplay must have this book. It should also be part of the reference library for anybody who is currently in the script writing business.

I recommend this as a reference for anyone who wants to find answers quickly. I have several screenplay formatting books and this one is definitely one of my faves. I don't think that any one book is the be-all-and-end -all guide to writing screenplays, but this is a must have for you collection. It allows you to reference information without searching for hours and having to read all of the preceeding information.

I was in the process of writting a script and had lots of questions on the Hollywood format, almost all were answer by this excelent book.

Do not look in here for dramatical structure, this you need to look for somewere else.

DP contains most of Bowles' classic gems, and it provides a good introduction to the kind of thing you will be encountering when you get old enough to take on THE SHELTERING SKY and LET IT COME DOWN. A musician by training, he took on writing as a sort of hobby, then became obssessed with it to the negkect of his music, as he relates in his breezy, atypical memoir WITHOUT STOPPING, written much later in life when he had attained a sort of Buddha-like, or Burroughs-like I don;'t care attitude about the things that had troubled him earlier. When this book first appeared it must have been one tremendous shock after another, and a few of the stories still carry an explosive charge.

One of the best tales seems to be an allegory of Bowles' progress from music to writing. In A DISTANT EPISODE, a professor of music gets abducted by desert bandits who remove his tongue and "train" him into becoming a dancing clown, like a monkey owned by a hurdy-gurdy man. They exhibit him widely, and his brain is so badly damaged that he is content with his retardation, knowing only the blows of his captors, until one afternoon when he accidentally hears some bars of Western music. He starts to cry and bawl his head off, he knows not why. It is a thoroughly repulsive story, but it displays beautifully the ambiguity with which Bowles viewed his long-ago music career, which he must after awhile have remembered only through a thousand veils.

PAGES FROM COLD POINT is pretty stronr too, not to say ripe. In Belize in the Caribbean, a wealthy American gay man comes to stay in a seaside mansion with his 16 year old son, Racky, the apple of his eye. What he doesn't know is that Racky is the bad seed incarnate, like a male Lolita, sex in dungarees. Racky enjoys going to every man and boy on the island, black or white, and seducing them, for he is so lovely no one would say no to him. Eventually the elders and the women decide to put the hammer down and warn the dad to take his slutty boy off the island or trouble will ensue. You won't believe what happens next, but it is worthy of a great porn movie. Radley Metzger might have made you believe it, but for Paul Bowles it was just another day in the life.

"Delicate Prey", the title story, is one of the most memorable stories I've ever encountered. This story of a young flute player and his uncles who are Arab traders crossing a remote desert region begins innocently enough but soon a stranger appears on the horizon who comes closer and closer. This desert episode is told with a perfect accumulation of atmospheric detail and just the barest amount of human detail to place this tale in the realm of myth. The tale involves many things that will later appear in Bowles' other short fictions including hashish and flute music and other things that will go unmentioned so as not to spoil their discovery by new readers. "At Paso Rojo" is a story set in South America on a ranch. There two sisters go after their mothers death to live with their brother. As the sisters settle in one sister especially decides she wants to live a freer life than women in the cities are allowed to live and she begins to allow herself liberties that shock her more conservative sister. As she rides through the wild jungle her horse bolts and the sensations she has impart to the reader that hers is no ordinary psychology. Used to suppressing her sexuality while her mother was alive she begins to explore her power as a woman and as events unfold we see that this power has sprouted something in her that cannot be mistaken for anything but pure evil. Every story in this collection presents striking locales and lurid acts. The appeal of them is partly in the exoticism of the locales and partly in the allure of the lurid. Bowles aesthetic is a strange one but his tales could not be delivered with any more force. The collection is dedicated to Poe, and appropriately so, but the depth of the psychological examination of different kinds of pathologies lend these stories a power that magnifies their effect beyond mere horror stories. They are stories of modern psyches with the superficial but protective veneer of civilization removed.

Not everyone will enjoy thse weird stories mostly set in Mexico or Morocco. They contain violence and, in a way, sex, although sex is never explicitly described. They almost always end in disaster, sometimes grotesque and cruel disaster. The sexual element is never quite straight heterosexual attraction between consenting adults. A frequent plot is that someone is invited somewhere by a host who becomes hostile or takes a journey following an unreliable guide that ends badly. Think DH Lawrence, Joyce Carol Oates, Roald Dahl, Truman Capote and, as regards the prose style. maybe even Raymond Carver He is a minimalist with a way of bringing an exotic setting to life in half a sentence without an adjective or adverb. A remarkable thing is how long ago the stories were written and how modern the style seems.

This is a must-read for anyone interested in 20th century American literature. An absolutely stunning collection of tales that provoke, disturb and intoxicate the reader. Bowles writes in a style that is almost clinical: dry, precise and elegant, which accentuates the horrors he describes all the more. Hailed by such writers and Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer as a modern classic, you should not fail to read it if you have not already done so. And if enjoyed this title, check out The Sheltering Sky and Let it Come Down.

Reading these stories, set in North Africa where Bowles lived, is like like roaming some lonely alien landscape while being helplessly asaulted by feelings of dread, wonder, strangeness, and beauty. Lacking much descriptive prose,these stories are naked, simple, raw. Gradualy the self dissolves, the character's behaivor is so defined by their enviroment that they become part of it . The reader, too, melts into the background. East and west colide violently, explode ; and nothing remains but the stark terror and magic of life. Own of Bowles best. A must forWilliam Burroughs fans too.

Paul Bowles will go down as the only writer of the soi-disant "Beat" generation worth a look at. In my opinion, of course, he ALREADY is the only one of them with a mote of talent. And what a talent it is!!-His style is original and inimitable. His writings convey a feeling totally unlike any other writer's....But what is it? The paradox is that since it's so original and unlike anything else, it's difficult to find words and comparisons to convey to the would-be reader why to buy this book. Almost all the reviews aver that Bowles' characters are defined by place. This is eminently the case. In fact, one might say that his characters are SO defined by place that they aren't really "characters" at all, but mere functions of the universes they find themselves in (rather harsh and bleak ones, to understate things a bit). -Reading these stories, you actually begin to lose a sense of self: YOUR self. That's how powerful Bowles' writing is. What you are left with is, of course, a hollowness, on the one hand, in finding that you have lost your sense of identity. But you have gained something: a lost wonder, beautiful and terrifying, of what existence, after all, is, that captures something of what a child feels at times. But the comparison with a child's view is to simplify things enormously. What you really gain, to put things perhaps a bit awkwardly, is the terror and wonder of being alive. The Greeks had a word for this feeling, Deinos. We don't have such a word, a word that so effectively combines the feelings of terror and wonder. - It's where we get the word dinosaur from, if that helps any.-But this may be beside the point. Just read the book...and...you'll see...

Bowles likes to place his characters in situations where all the usual comforts have been removed. So his locations are remote ones. South America and North Africa are two of his favorite. The characters in these stories are usually sensitive types and so are already fragile and impressionble but in the unusual settings those characterictics are even more evident and make them especially vulnerable. Bowles characters are travelers set against native cultures and in such conditions the traveler is always at a disadvantage because he has left behind those things which have served to stabilize his life. The traveler is merely adrift in the world, while the natives of the visited region have remained rooted to a very old culture. America itself is a very young culture, a colonial culture, and the authors that Bowles admired were those early colonial writers like Poe. Bowles in a way continues with Poe's themes of Americans lost in the untamed wilderness of themselves. But also in Bowles writing one can feel the influence of writers he was contemporary with like Camus, who also experienced colonialism as he was raised in North Africa under French rule. There is violence in Bowles work of many kinds but always along with the violence is some discovery about either an individual or about the nature of the world in general or both as the violent act often serves to strip away a characters long held illusions which kept a certain version of the world in place and reveal a more primitive more vital world beneath. The stories by and large take place in the mind of the traveling westerner, though one story is told through the eyes of an Arab. You can get a complete collection of Bowles stories for about twice the price but this collection contains all the stories he is known for including the title story and Delicate Prey, his two most famous.But there are at least a dozen stories here which once read will never be forgotten.

Reading these stories, set in North Africa where Bowles lived, is like like roaming some lonely alien landscape while being helplessly asaulted by feelings of dread, wonder, strangeness, and beauty. Lacking much descriptive prose,these stories are naked, simple, raw. Gradualy the self dissolves, the character's behaivor is so defined by their enviroment that they becme part of it . The reader, too, melts into the background. East and west colide violently, explode ; and nothing remains but the stark terror and magic of life. Own of Bowles best. A must forWilliam Burroughs fans too.

Paul Bowles, is extraordinary beyond words. This simple book, has been written beautifully. The Stories shared are extremely insightful, where by attention has been made to every aspect of every character who is approached in this book.
The most secretive inhibitions are spoken of, hateful racist thoughts towards the Spanish Jew's to the so called "witch craft" practiced by Moroccan women, prostitution's ironic recurrent presence, and of course intoxications intensity of the moment.
It is by all means a thought provoking book, that surely deserves attention.

There are two things that set this collection of short stories apart from other Beat movement literature. First, everyone of these stories, regardless of actual plot, includes the use of kif (marijuana). Secondly, this is one of the few true Beat works that is set outside of the American continent. In fact, it is more a collection of folk tales inspired by a merge of Jewish, Moslem, and European cultures. It was not unknown for the Beats to travel to such exotic places as Morocco. William Burroughs did a stint over there. But, the tales told here could have been written by a native, rather than an outsider who was merely visiting. Well worth the read!

"A pipe of kif before breakfast gives a man the strength of a hundred camels in the courtyard." The proverb which opens this collection of stories lets us know where Bowles is coming from. Four short tales of Moroccan kif smokers open doors into worlds distant in time, space, and spiritual reality from millennial America. Bowles' style is distantly reminiscent of Hemingway in its bare simplicity, but also evocative of the South American magical realists in its exploration of the miraculous.

Each of his heroes is a kif smoker, and each finds it to be a useful and integral part of his life. Whether dealing with difficult neighbors in "A Friend of the World" or avoiding the cops in "He of the Assembly," smokers have a definite edge in Bowles' Morocco. But this is no simple paean--the stupid everyday troubles that also spring from kif are presented vividly and humorously (the soldier who loses his gun in "The Wind at Beni Midar" perfectly captures the zenith and nadir of chronic use). Short but satisfying, "A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard" makes an excellent introduction to Paul Bowles' work.

From the preface: "Moroccan kif-smokers like to speak of "two worlds",the one ruled by inexorable natural laws, and the other, the kif world,in which each person perceives "reality" according to his own essence, the state of consciousness in which the elements of the physical universe are automatically rearranged by cannabis to suit the requirements of the individual."-Paul Bowles

Bowles immersion into the culture of North Africa has produced some of the most interesting literature. This scant collection of four stories is an attractive little book of inconsequential but readable tales. Just as Bowles studied and collected Moroccan music as a key into the North African mindset so here he studies kif as another kind of key, one that gives him direct access into the North African subconscious. Bowles sets forth in the introduction that these tales are put together making use of associations made while he was under the kif influence. ....the best parts to my ears are the hermetic sayings overheard by kif smokers. "The eye wants to sleep but the head is no mattress", "The earth trembles and the sky is afraid, and the two eyes are not brothers", "A pipe of kif before breakfast gives a man the strength of one hundred camels in the courtyard".
The folk simplicity of these tales is very appealing. Later Bowles will cover this terrain again when he works with Mohammed Mrabet transcripting that Moroccans oral tales. An excellent book by Mrabet/Bowles is M'Hashish(which means full of hashish). Happy happy reading.

The book works wonderfully as an outline for studying for exams. Each unit wraps up the textbook pretty succinctly and gives new understanding to some topics the text might not clearly explain. I will buy the rest of the series as I progress through my nursing program.

This book is an excellent resource for nursing students especially if you are needing practice with nclex style questions or focusing in on specific items to study. For instance, it has items tagged NCLEX and almost invariably these items ended up on most of my unit and final exams. With so much info to know this definitely helped me hone in on the most important pieces. It is written in outline format, it is easy to read and the extra test questions are excellent.

This book is great for reviewing Fundamentals of Nursing Freshman I (Level 1) Nursing. I used it to review for my final and for perioperative nursing. It has an outline, pre and post tests, as well as NCLEX questions and a CD with more questions. I just bought Medical-Surgical by the same author!!! I will probably buy the next set for L&D, Peds, and Psych if they have them available. Thank you for a wonderfully written study tool.

If you have to get ready for your NCLEX or just simply overview Nursing Fundamentals area - this book is a Bible of Fundamentals, short, easy to read and retain, perfect tool!
Thanks for your help, AUTHOR!

Allen Hibbard's Paul Bowles, Magic and Morocco is a moving and unique memoir that exhibits both scholarly admiration and homage to his friend Paul Bowles. Hibbard sets the stage by creating an interesting genealogy of writers prior to Bowles (for example Washington Irving (1829), Pierre Loti (1889), and Henri Matisse (1912), just to mention a few) to demonstrate that many writers often seek exotic places to nurture their imagination, which may result in very magical and exotic narratives. The memoir shifts to an intimate look of Bowles's life, which highlights Hibbard's own personal tale of how he is attracted to the exotic allure and magic of Morocco and the Middle East. Hibbard recounts his own acquaintance and experience with Moroccan and Arabic cultures, and his meeting of the Mage of Morocco --Paul Bowles. Moving forward into the time and space after Bowles death, Hibbard talks to his friend's spirit in a letter, which is emotionally stirring and well done.

Regardless of your experience with reading Paul Bowles, I personally recommend this book. The genealogy provides an easy to read and entertaining overview of several notable writers. In addition, the book presents a very interesting sample of magic and myths in North Africa. The movement through time and space that spans from the early writers, through the life of Paul Bowles, and ends with a letter to Bowles's spirit is beautifully done. The book's narrative, like its intriguing cover, is guaranteed to cast a magical spell on whoever reads it.

Paul Bowles, Magic & Morocco by academician, reviewer, essayist, and translator Allen Hibbard addresses the life and work of expatriate author Paul Bowles. An in-depth work of literary criticism that transcends boundaries to explore the occult forces that permeated Bowles' life, the Moroccan mysteries and North African customs, culture, and magic he studied, the mystical influence drugs, sex, and music, and much more. Paul Bowles, Magic & Morocco takes a personal turn as author Hibbard dares to speak to Bowles directly, addressing him from beyond the grave. A college-level analysis, seeking to define unimaginable forces and expressions.

Convoluted title to the review, convoluted subject: Paul Bowles. Mr. Hibbard is "hooked" on Bowles and suffers from some of his grandiosity, but, overall, this is an interesting read. The first few chapters annoyed me because Hibbard quotes a lot from books I've already read and, at times, the book reads like an undergraduate term paper. Still, you have to give him an "A" as he draws in many references in his analysis (Ph.D. stuff).

What I really like about his analysis is that, though Mr. Hibbard may not know good fiction (and hence bad fiction) when he sees it, he is not afraid to portray Mr. Bowles as the sadistic little twit that he, in part, was. Hibbard's hyperbolic language aside, he effectively shows how Bowles' lifelong sadistic tendencies found fertile soil in the bizarre, superstitious world of Morocco, where Bowles became his own little evil dictator of sorts. Especially cruel was his luring of the innocent Alfred Chester from New York and then playing with him like a captured mouse. (Chester actually overdosed on drugs in Israel a few years later, his fragile psychology having been "finished off" by Bowles' manipulations.) Both charming and maniacal, Bowles cast a large, creepy shadow. Mr. Hibbard peers out knowingly at us from behind it.

But, the picture of Bowles and Mr. Hibbard at the back of the book has to go. Hibbard looks like Saturday Night Live's Will Ferrell (after some really bad acid.) Bowles grins self-satisfactorily behind his Carlo Ponti sunglasses and you have to wonder, what has he done to the poor boy? Then, there is this crazy picture of some Viennese guy (the illustrator) who looks like a cross between Santa Claus and a rabbi. The only illustration in my edition is the unsettling one on the cover, which qualifies as "outsider" (insane) art. The illustrator apparently has some avant-garde theater thing going in Prinzenhof (sic?).

Oh yes, and the actual book is tiny, possibly shrunk down during one of Mr. Hibbard's Bowlesian experiments. After reading this book, I think I've had my fill of Paul Bowles. Now, I'm looking at getting the anthology of Alfred Chester's work. (It's all Michele Green's fault, you know.)

Hibbard's book offers a behind-the-scenes look at Paul Bowles's life and literature, and the author's Bowles-as-magician interpretation will only enhance anything you've ever read by Bowles. Hibbard periodically inserts passages from Bowles's stories and letters to emphasize his points and to show parallels between Paul's reality and fantasy worlds--ultimately showing how the magician fused those two worlds into one. By revealing to readers how Bowles's fiction thrust him into Bowles's real life, Hibbard subtly, artfully becomes a magician himself, walking the same lines between fantasy and reality throughout his friendship with Paul, remembering fictional situations as real ones take place. Although Hibbard's intent wasn't to convince as much as it was to present, I was thoroughly convinced by the end of this book that Bowles was somehow more than mortal. The author demonstrates a broad knowledge of Bowles, his fellow literary friends, his critics, and North Africa in general, yet the book never sounds as if it were written by an academic. Instead, Hibbard's voice is friendly and welcoming, and he seems eager to lead his readers into an exotic world: I was willingly grabbed by the hand and led through Tangier, into Paul's home, to the Moroccan coast to sip mint tea. Rarely is non-fiction as beautifully presented as it is in this book!

You can read the other detailed reviews, all earning 5 stars, and see why this item is ranked so highly. Three novels all in one nice, hardbound, 900+ pages volume, at a great price. I already had all three in paperback, and still ordered this book. If you love Paul Bowles as I do, or are just beginning to read his work, this is the book to buy.

I am captivated by the observations and writing style of Bowles that both brings me into his characters and the settings of Morroco. I was also prepared for my trip to Morroco (where i am writing this from) in the sense of cultural moods and a a few phrases. I have a feeling that his writing seeped something of Morroco into me that gave me some of the confidence I needed as an american in this foreign world.

This is my first exposure to the writings of Paul Bowles. What a surprise! The three novels in this edition were written in the late 1940’s to mid 1950’s. His characters are not at all dated. His writing is clear, and uncluttered. In contrasted to his writing style, are his characters who complex, murky and often compelling. I read straight through from the Sheltering Sky to Let It Come Down to The Spider’s House. He is one of the most interesting 20th century American writers. The Library of America has done a wonderful service to readers by ensuring that Paul Bowles will remain in print.

The Sheltering Sky, the first of three novels in this edition, is short, only 250 pages long. It seems to be considered his defining novel. It is about a married couple, Kit, and Port, and their sojourn into the Sahara Desert. They are dishonest with each other about many things, their shaky marriage, and the danger of the trip they have embarked on, fidelity. They cannot take charge of anything, their lives, their marriage, their trip, and even their privacy. The decisions that they make exude with bad judgement. This is exposed early on, when Porter goes off for a walk alone the city. He encounters a stranger, Smail; Port walks off with this stranger, out of the city into the desert to meet and be entertained by a young girl, who he is told is “not a [prostitute] but will want to be paid. The characters do dangerous things. You sense their doom with them. And, like them, the reader is compelled to go on. I do not want to give too many plot details as it might spoil the pleasure of reading what I think is an overlooked 20th century classic.

Let It Come Down, is about a bank clerk seeking adventure in Tangier. Like the Sheltering Sky, there is no happy ending here. You can sense the impending doom of the main character as he makes one bad decision after another. He gets involved with a local prostitute, financial intrigue, and in the end, drugs.

The Spider’s House starts with a quote from the Thousand and One Nights “To my way of thinking, there is nothing more delightful than to be a stranger. And so I mingle with human beings because they are not of my kind, and precisely in order to be a stranger among them.” In the wake of the worldwide effects of militant Islamism, this is a fascinating book to read.

The characters include two Americans. The first, Stenham, sees the French colonial rule in Morocco as destructive. He becomes attracted to Islam. The second is arrogant and contemptuous of the locals, the country, just about everything Moroccan. Each is stranger. Each sees and judges the Moroccan people, their culture, and their religion through western eyes. And so, Bowles introduces Amar, a teenage Moroccan boy, who is a direct descendent of the prophet, Mohammed. The boy is illiterate and poor, but not ignorant. The view of the world that each maintains at the beginning of the novel cannot hold. Set in a time of rebellion, there is plenty of plot to keep the characters moving along.

I highly recommend these three novels. This hard cover edition is published by the Library of America. It is the one that you will want to buy, and keep as part of your permanent library.

I couldn't be happier that the Library of America has released Paul Bowles' three best novels (he only wrote four) in one volume. Previously they were only available in not-so-easy to find small press editions. Hopefully this edition will make them readily available to a wider audience in volume and time.

The most striking thing about Bowles' work is its pace. It moves at a mesmerizing rate. The language is fairly simple but it plods along with a suspensful tension that never lets up even after a climatic moment. It is the kind of fiction to read next to a fountain in a courtyard.

Bowles' characters are almost always out of place, or are where they shouldn't be, or where they think they should be. They become engulfed by cultures that they don't understand not through stupidity or banality but often through the natural course of clashing cultures. Reading the books can give you a feeling of getting lost, and overcome with a feeling that you don't belong, or that you're delving into worlds you aren't prepared to delve into. This is the terror that underlies nearly all of his writing. They are cautionary tales, and they have become more relevant in the past few years since Bowles' death in 1999 (not highly publicized), and the rising relevance of Islam in and to the West.

Bowles is one of the first western writers of fiction that treats Islam equally to European society. Islam is not merely a backdrop in which his characters find fault or get ground up in (i.e., you never get the sense that Bowles is blaming the cultures themselves for the destruction of his characters, typically they are responsible, but it really isn't anybody's 'fault' per se). This is multicultural literature at its best, because it allows nastiness and goodness on all sides. Bowles is not afraid to show the dark sides of Islamic and European cultures side by side, while allowing positive aspects a place as well. He is also never racist towards either side, though some critics have accussed him of this (wrongly, in my opinion).

Bowles is an eye-opener. All three of these novels will make an impact on you and make you think about things you've never thought of before. Thanks again to the Library of America for releasing this collection. Buy it and read it.