Thoughts on the book
by Paul Bowles
"And in the same
fashion, the strange languor in the centre of her consciousness, those vaporous
ideas which kept appearing, as though independently of her will, were mere
tentative fragments of her own presence, looming against the nothingness of a
sleep not yet cold. A sleep still powerful enough to return and take her in its
arms. But she remained awake; the nascent light invading her eyes, and still no
corresponding aliveness awoke within her; she had no feeling of being anywhere,
or being anyone."
Several years ago I saw
Bernardo Bertolucci's 1990 film version of the book in question and found it
rather forgettable. The film version felt like the story of a bourgeois couple
who venture off the beaten track in search of new experiences and pay the price
for their xenophobic entitlement. It was all surface, with none of the deeper
nuances or illusory tone that Bowles captures so brilliantly in his book. Here,
the connection with the female protagonist, Kit Moresby, is so absolute, that
it becomes impossible to view the book as anything less than the story of a
woman seeking liberation against the imprisoning factors that attempt to define
and dominate her throughout. Feelings of guilt and grief circle about the
thoughts of this character like the encroaching sandstorms that drift across
the book's arid North African deserts, as Kit finds herself incarcerated
repeatedly by systems and circumstances, and finally by the landscape itself.
The Sheltering Sky [Bernardo
Bertolucci, 1990]:
I saw the Bertolucci film
for the first time in October 2012. At the time I wrote the following:
"Like its characters, the film is in too much of a hurry to get from one
location to the next; rarely capturing the atmosphere or the colour of a place
before we're off again, onto the next misadventure. Bertolucci seems to view
North Africa with a cynical suspicion. The landscapes may be striking but the
people are seen as shady, even untrustworthy. The closing lines are beautiful
(and beautifully delivered by the author himself) but offer only a vague hint
to the reflective and possibly even poetic film that might have existed before
it collapsed into melodramatic excess."
The Sheltering Sky [Paul
Bowles, 1949]:
Needless to say, I found the
book remarkable. Not least in its storytelling, but in its moments of evocation
and surrealism. Passages where the language becomes so heightened and
atmospheric that it passes through the influences of observation and the
"travelogue" to become charged with something altogether more
figurative and revealing. Images that are stark and entirely unforgettable in
their illustration, but also in what they communicate, imparting upon the
narrative something richer, more psychological and suggestive. Without wishing
to spoil anything for the uninitiated, the final part of the book in particular
maintains an odd, dreamlike tone, becoming more than just a continuation of the
character's journey but an effort to distil the narrative of the first two
parts into a figurative, psycho-dramatic, psychosexual expression of Kit's
inner consciousness.
I took my copy of the book
with me on a recent Scottish excursion and as such it's now pretty beat up.
However, the bends and tears that mark its cover and the water damage seeped
into its yellowing pages each bear the memories of that great trip, which of
course feels fitting for a book about travel, and about the lure of losing
oneself completely in a culture that isn't your own. I may return to the
Bertolucci film at some point in the near future to see if a familiarity with
the book deepens or enriches the adaptation, but in all honesty I think the
subconscious film that was constructed in my own mind during the reading of Bowles's
evocative and illusory text remains more powerful and certainly more
transportive.
