Paul Bowles

In the American Grain
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64014-080-6
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 14, 234 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 485 g

Reihe: Studies in American Literature and Culture

Shows that the writings of Paul Bowles, who is often seen as a literary renegade, owe much to the antinomian American tradition of Emerson and his literary descendants.

Paul Bowles has often been considered a cult writer, a literary renegade: he lived more than fifty years as an expatriate in Morocco, and according to Norman Mailer, his works "let in the murder, the drugs, the incest. the call of the orgy, the end of civilization." In recent decades Bowles has found greater acceptance as a serious writer, as evidenced by the two-volume, 2,000-page Library of America edition of his works published in 2002. Still, he has rarely if ever been seen as having written in the antinomian tradition of Emerson and his literary descendants. The present book makes the case for doing so by demonstrating basic Emersonian attitudes and objectives in Bowles' life and works, especially in his focus on human consciousness and perception and on the need for the individual to escape from the trammels of social and cultural conditioning. Bowles' intellectual pursuits seem to have developed at first from his own spontaneous attitudes, which were then reinforced by his conservative and individualistic New England background on both sides of his family and deepened by a serious study of anthropology, Emersonian transcendentalism, and related "Oriental" thought such as the theosophy of Krishnamurti. Despite his half century in Tangier, Bowles is a writer who is thoroughly "in the American grain."

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tharaud, Barry Charles

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Nicht-Westliche Philosophie Indische & Asiatische Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: Paul Bowles as a Canonical Writer
Paul Bowles on Intercultural Understanding: Too Far from Home
The Discovery of Existence: Without Stopping
Emersonian Shadows
Culture and Existence in Bowles' Short Fiction
Gide and Bowles in North Africa: The Sheltering Sky
Language, Noise, Silence: Self and Society in Let It Come Down
The Spider's House: The Social Construction of Reality
Existence and Imagination: Up Above the World
The Letters: In Touch
Conclusion
Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Tharaud, Barry Charles
BARRY THARAUD is Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Mesa State College, Colorado.