Paul Bowles’ early work spans two continents, the Americas and North Africa, and in his oeuvre these comprise a single rim: western civilization’s menacing, miscegenated edge. In the diverse physical and moral landscapes that he sketches in his stories, the appeal of travel, the draw of the exotic is quickly, snatchingly replaced and subsumed by dislocation, unbelonging, a creeping horror at the bizarreness of the other.
Strangeness might be the axis most useful for ordering Bowles’ work. In the twilight region that his stories inhabit, an enterprising editor might order these stories in a kind of advancing crepuscule, from “straight stories” like “You are not I,” to Poe-ish fables like “Doña Faustina,” to the outright magical-realist “The Circular Valley.”
His stories could be read as a continuation of the American Gothic tradition, a transplantation of the genre to foreign soils, and indeed, his work resembles in certain respects that of another acolyte of Poe: H.P. Lovecraft. What is distinctive about Bowles’ work is his stark, hard-edged tone. However closely the narrator might press to one of his hapless protagonists, Bowles’ prose remains as detached, distant, and indifferent as a pagan god.
These stories are fascinating, dark pleasures, dishes best served cold. Bowles has the eye for detail of a seasoned traveller, and his stores are so closely and tightly observed, their details so precise, they could have been cut out by a razor.