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Their Heads Are Green And Their Hands Are Blue
In the nineteenth century there flourished a peculiar breed of Englishmen—often the second sons of the aristocracy, or ambitious men from a lower class—who as soldiers, consuls and tea planters, were largely responsible for making England a great colonial power.
Save for the fact that he is a staunch anticolonialist, Paul Bowles resembles these men in many respects. Like them, he appears to be happiest away from civilization as we know it; like them, he thrives when the traveling is hardest, the food ghastly or infrequent, water scarce, heat intolerable, or mosquitoes abundant.
This engaging collection of eight travel essays by the author of such noted fiction as The Sheltering Sky and The Delicate Prey deals largely with places in the world that few Westerners have ever heard of, much less seen—places as yet unencumbered by the trappings, luxuries, and corruptions of modern civilization. Except for one essay on Central America, all of these pieces are concerned with remote spots in the Hindu, Buddhist, or Mohammedan worlds. The author is a sympathetic and discerning interpreter of these alien cultures, and his eyes and ears are especially alert both to what is bizarre and what is wise in the civilizations in which he settles. He is also acutely aware of the transitions occurring on the fringes of many of these regions, and he is disturbed and indignant about the corrosive effect of Western culture on the non-Christian way of life.
Above all, however, Paul Bowles is a superb and observant traveler—born wanderer who finds pleasure in the inaccessible and who cheerfully endures the concomitant hardships matter-of-factly and with humor.
These essays provide us with Paul Bowles’s characteristic insightfulness and bring us closer to a world we frequently hear about, but often find difficult to understand.
Save for the fact that he is a staunch anticolonialist, Paul Bowles resembles these men in many respects. Like them, he appears to be happiest away from civilization as we know it; like them, he thrives when the traveling is hardest, the food ghastly or infrequent, water scarce, heat intolerable, or mosquitoes abundant.
This engaging collection of eight travel essays by the author of such noted fiction as The Sheltering Sky and The Delicate Prey deals largely with places in the world that few Westerners have ever heard of, much less seen—places as yet unencumbered by the trappings, luxuries, and corruptions of modern civilization. Except for one essay on Central America, all of these pieces are concerned with remote spots in the Hindu, Buddhist, or Mohammedan worlds. The author is a sympathetic and discerning interpreter of these alien cultures, and his eyes and ears are especially alert both to what is bizarre and what is wise in the civilizations in which he settles. He is also acutely aware of the transitions occurring on the fringes of many of these regions, and he is disturbed and indignant about the corrosive effect of Western culture on the non-Christian way of life.
Above all, however, Paul Bowles is a superb and observant traveler—born wanderer who finds pleasure in the inaccessible and who cheerfully endures the concomitant hardships matter-of-factly and with humor.
These essays provide us with Paul Bowles’s characteristic insightfulness and bring us closer to a world we frequently hear about, but often find difficult to understand.
222 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1957
42 people are currently reading
882 people want to read
About the author
Paul Bowles
252 books868 followersPaul Frederic Bowles grew up in New York, and attended college at the University of Virginia before traveling to Paris, where became a part of Gertrude Stein's literary and artistic circle. Following her advice, he took his first trip to Tangiers in 1931 with his friend, composer Aaron Copeland.
In 1938 he married author and playwright Jane Auer (see: Jane Bowles). He moved to Tangiers permanently in 1947, with Auer following him there in 1948. There they became fixtures of the American and European expatriate scene, their visitors including Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. Bowles continued to live in Tangiers after the death of his wife in 1973.
Bowles died of heart failure in Tangier on November 18, 1999. His ashes were interred near the graves of his parents and grandparents in Lakemont, New York.
In 1938 he married author and playwright Jane Auer (see: Jane Bowles). He moved to Tangiers permanently in 1947, with Auer following him there in 1948. There they became fixtures of the American and European expatriate scene, their visitors including Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. Bowles continued to live in Tangiers after the death of his wife in 1973.
Bowles died of heart failure in Tangier on November 18, 1999. His ashes were interred near the graves of his parents and grandparents in Lakemont, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
October 27, 2020
Truth is not what you perceive with your senses, but what you feel in your heart.
*
Immediately when you arrive in the Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straightway. Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem faint-hearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise, curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, cutting it into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone, and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue, darkest directly overhead and paling toward the earth, so that the night never really grows dark. You leave the gate of the fort or the town behind, pass the camels lying outside, go up into the dunes, or out onto the hard, stony plain and stand awhile, alone. Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls, or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you, something that everyone who lives there has undergone and which the French call le baptême de la solitude. It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here, in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears; nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating. A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintegration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came.
*
Immediately when you arrive in the Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straightway. Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem faint-hearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise, curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, cutting it into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone, and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue, darkest directly overhead and paling toward the earth, so that the night never really grows dark. You leave the gate of the fort or the town behind, pass the camels lying outside, go up into the dunes, or out onto the hard, stony plain and stand awhile, alone. Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls, or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you, something that everyone who lives there has undergone and which the French call le baptême de la solitude. It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here, in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears; nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating. A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintegration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came.
May 1, 2008
I have a firm belief that if I had Paul Bowles as a travel guide in North Africa or Central America - I will die! Can you imagine getting in a cab with him? Yikes! But while you are taking your bath and reading these fantastic travel essays - then you are perfectly safe. Bowles is superb.
March 5, 2020
The sky features as a reference point in Paul Bowles writing, as in the stories in Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue.
Includes the story 'Baptism of Solitude',
"Immediately when you arrive in the Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness". . . ."Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem faint-hearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape."
And in another story, 'Africa Minor', Bowles writes of a fourteen hour truck ride from Kerzaz to Adrar.
"In North Africa the earth becomes the less important part of the landscape because you find yourself constantly raising your eyes to look at the sky. In the arid landscape the sky is the final arbiter. When you have understood that, not intellectually but emotionally, you have also understood why it is that the great trinity of monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - which removed the source of power from the earth itself to the spaces outside the earth - were evolved in desert regions."
Includes the story 'Baptism of Solitude',
"Immediately when you arrive in the Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness". . . ."Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem faint-hearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape."
And in another story, 'Africa Minor', Bowles writes of a fourteen hour truck ride from Kerzaz to Adrar.
"In North Africa the earth becomes the less important part of the landscape because you find yourself constantly raising your eyes to look at the sky. In the arid landscape the sky is the final arbiter. When you have understood that, not intellectually but emotionally, you have also understood why it is that the great trinity of monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - which removed the source of power from the earth itself to the spaces outside the earth - were evolved in desert regions."
March 1, 2020
If you can ignore the Orientalist tropes, this is a collection of mildly diverting accounts of Bowles's travels around North Africa and Asia. Fairly flat descriptions with the odd surprise here and there.
November 13, 2016
Their Heads Are Green And Their Hands Are Blue (1963) is a collection of essays about travel by Paul Bowles. Bowles has a gift for telling observations about travel in places that weren't really meant for tourists, as well as exposing interesting aspects of the people who live in the obscure places he traveled. "Fish Traps and Private Business" is about his travels in Sri Lanka (Ceylon)--a place that he once had a residence. He does an overview of the culture and religion of North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria). Travel in India is covered in "Notes Mailed at Nagercoil." One of the more interesting pieces was his portrait of the average Moslem, who Bowles suggests is about to disappear in the near future, in "Mustapha and His Friends." There is another interesting portrait of a Moroccan character who Bowles brings to Turkey to help him navigate the country in "A Man Must Not Be Very Moslem." Bowles was also a composer and while living in Morocco, Bowles tried to record and preserve the folk music of the region. In "The Rif, to Music" he recounts his time traveling around the region trying to capture music. Bowles celebrates the solitude of the desert in the "Baptism Of Solitude." "All Parrots Speak" reveals Bowles appreciation of parrots as pets. The final essay, "The Route to Tassemsit," is another record of his attempts to preserve the local folk music. All in all, it is a very enlightening and entertaining collection of essays about places I would like to travel to, but not in the rustic manner Bowles did.
January 14, 2016
This book is incredible.
"For long hours I sat in the patio listening to the sounds of the city outside, sometimes hearing faint strains of music that I would have given anything really to hear, watching the square of deep-blue sky above my head slowly become a softer and lighter blue as twilight approached, waiting for the swallows that wheeled above the patio when the day was finally over and the muezzins began their calls to evening prayer, and merely existing in the hope that someone would come, something would happen before too many hours had gone past."
"For long hours I sat in the patio listening to the sounds of the city outside, sometimes hearing faint strains of music that I would have given anything really to hear, watching the square of deep-blue sky above my head slowly become a softer and lighter blue as twilight approached, waiting for the swallows that wheeled above the patio when the day was finally over and the muezzins began their calls to evening prayer, and merely existing in the hope that someone would come, something would happen before too many hours had gone past."
August 3, 2009
Somewhat reminiscent of The Road To Oxiana - these aristocratic types head off for North Africa and Asia with a refreshing lack of expectation that there are any bourgeois comforts to be had and tend to report on exactly what they see. It is only the passing mention that he is circumnavigating India with 18 (!) pieces of luggage that is a bit hard to envision.
Currently halfway through and his notes on the process of collecting ethnomusicological recordings for the Library of Congress in the 1950s are fascinating - all in all, I find this far more readable than The Sheltering Sky.
His 1963 introduction to the collection of short pieces quotes Levi-Strauss, in a passage that obviously rings truer than ever this many decades later: "What travel discloses to us first of all is our own garbage, flung in the face of humanity."
Currently halfway through and his notes on the process of collecting ethnomusicological recordings for the Library of Congress in the 1950s are fascinating - all in all, I find this far more readable than The Sheltering Sky.
His 1963 introduction to the collection of short pieces quotes Levi-Strauss, in a passage that obviously rings truer than ever this many decades later: "What travel discloses to us first of all is our own garbage, flung in the face of humanity."
November 13, 2007
Bowles believed that before the twentieth century the non-western world was pristine, and that it only recently began a regrettable slide into corruption and westernization. It's easy to see from our vantage point here in the present that he was being silly, but also easy, because he was writing in the midst of a worldwide revolution, to forgive him. This short collection of essays is passionate and adventurous, and has left me quite jealous.
September 9, 2013
"Every time I go to a place I have not seen before, I hope it will be as different as possible from the places I already know."
An affection for the obscure, which I share, begins Paul Bowles' collection of travel essays. While I gripe about the sameness of the 21st century American city (UGH I'm so sick of micro greens and chicken on a ciabatta roll), I doubt I would survive in Paul's world. He lived as a perma-expat for a few decades, spending time collecting North African music for the Library of Congress, reporting on fishing in Ceylon, and encountering a number of parrots along the way.
He uses personal interactions to drive the narrative of diversity and adventure. From the foreword:
"If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another. With few exceptions, landscape alone is of insufficient interest to warrant the effort it takes to see it. Even the works of man, unless they are being used in his daily living, have a way of losing their meaning, and take on the qualities of decoration. What makes Istanbul worth while to the outsider is not the presence of the mosques and the covered souks, but the fact that they still function as such. If the people of India did not have their remarkable awareness of the importance of spiritual discipline, it would be an overwhelmingly depressing country to visit, notwithstanding its architectural wonders. And North Africa without its tribes, inhabited by, let us say, the Swiss, would be merely a rather more barren California."
He was able to make his trips on the forefront of globalism, often before consistent electricity or comfortable amenities reached these faraway lands. So, I take his authority to paint an accurate picture of the difficulty of finding suitable lodging, navigating an unfriendly culture, or the negotiation of finding a particularly rare musical instrument (whose recording I cannot locate online). He's a skilled writer, able to weave a complex picture of the parrying between man and wife in Moslem life. The resentment and violence eminent in such an exchange may be shocking to us, but he presents it as almost a necessity of the culture, an arms race of sneaking and gossip amongst women and stewing upset in the men, played as a game time and time again. Many of the transactions are described as games, which may be an accurate portrayal of a foreign culture: you learn the rules, which shortcut our hardened Western logic.
It's a compelling portrait, though I do not wish to visit the depths of the Sahara ("Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem faint-hearted efforts") and sleep adjacent to a latrine as he did. Of course, that may not be an option. I'd guess that many of the places he describes no longer or exist, or would be unrecognizable to a reincarnation of Paul Bowles. But I'm glad to have one account of these exotic locales.
"Today's paper announced an outbreak of bubonic plague in Bellary. I keep thinking about it, and I wonder if the almost certain eventual victory over such diseases will prove to have been worth its price: the extinction of the beliefs and rituals which gave a satisfactory meaning to the period of consciousness that goes between birth and death. I doubt it. Security is a false god; begin making sacrifices to it and you are lost."
An affection for the obscure, which I share, begins Paul Bowles' collection of travel essays. While I gripe about the sameness of the 21st century American city (UGH I'm so sick of micro greens and chicken on a ciabatta roll), I doubt I would survive in Paul's world. He lived as a perma-expat for a few decades, spending time collecting North African music for the Library of Congress, reporting on fishing in Ceylon, and encountering a number of parrots along the way.
He uses personal interactions to drive the narrative of diversity and adventure. From the foreword:
"If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another. With few exceptions, landscape alone is of insufficient interest to warrant the effort it takes to see it. Even the works of man, unless they are being used in his daily living, have a way of losing their meaning, and take on the qualities of decoration. What makes Istanbul worth while to the outsider is not the presence of the mosques and the covered souks, but the fact that they still function as such. If the people of India did not have their remarkable awareness of the importance of spiritual discipline, it would be an overwhelmingly depressing country to visit, notwithstanding its architectural wonders. And North Africa without its tribes, inhabited by, let us say, the Swiss, would be merely a rather more barren California."
He was able to make his trips on the forefront of globalism, often before consistent electricity or comfortable amenities reached these faraway lands. So, I take his authority to paint an accurate picture of the difficulty of finding suitable lodging, navigating an unfriendly culture, or the negotiation of finding a particularly rare musical instrument (whose recording I cannot locate online). He's a skilled writer, able to weave a complex picture of the parrying between man and wife in Moslem life. The resentment and violence eminent in such an exchange may be shocking to us, but he presents it as almost a necessity of the culture, an arms race of sneaking and gossip amongst women and stewing upset in the men, played as a game time and time again. Many of the transactions are described as games, which may be an accurate portrayal of a foreign culture: you learn the rules, which shortcut our hardened Western logic.
It's a compelling portrait, though I do not wish to visit the depths of the Sahara ("Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem faint-hearted efforts") and sleep adjacent to a latrine as he did. Of course, that may not be an option. I'd guess that many of the places he describes no longer or exist, or would be unrecognizable to a reincarnation of Paul Bowles. But I'm glad to have one account of these exotic locales.
"Today's paper announced an outbreak of bubonic plague in Bellary. I keep thinking about it, and I wonder if the almost certain eventual victory over such diseases will prove to have been worth its price: the extinction of the beliefs and rituals which gave a satisfactory meaning to the period of consciousness that goes between birth and death. I doubt it. Security is a false god; begin making sacrifices to it and you are lost."
March 14, 2012
El silencio del Sahara, temperaturas a más de 70º en el piso, costumbres ancestrales, la arena intrusa en cualquier rincón de tu cuerpo. Paul Bowles, a guisa de moderno Marco Polo, se tomó la molestia de sufrir en tierras lejanas, ajenas, agrestes todo lo que para un americano puede implicar dejar sus comodidades. Si pensamos que la aventura es un viaje en alta mar con todo y tormentas, internarse en la profunda selva a merced de su ritmo, o volar, consideremos como una gran opción el viajar por el desierto y entrometerse en costumbres, ritos y un modo de vida totalmente diferente al que conocemos.
En gran parte de su libro (llamado en español "Cabezas verdes, manos azules"), nos narra sus años en Marruecos, donde a través de una beca de la Fundación Rockefeller, se dedica a mimetizarse entre el norte de África para grabar música y ritos locales, pasando por una serie de inconvenientes, uno cada vez más difícil que el anterior y aprendiendo sabiamente de las costumbres de los nativos.
La narrativa y descriptiva de Bowles son los verdaderos protagonistas de este libro que nos llena de frescura con sus diarios, sintiendo a veces hasta los olores que lo atormentan y descifrando las razones de porqué somos culturas tan diferentes en este planeta tan pequeño.
Como lo apunta en su Introducción, estamos tan confundidos los unos con los otros que consideramos extraños o jumbilis a todo aquel que no cumple con nuestra identidad... Pero también existe la posibilidad de que nosotros seamos los extraños para ellos.
Tal vez yo nunca haga un viaje al desierto, pero si lo hago, procuraré tener los ojos tan abiertos como este insólito viajero para desmenuzar el gusto por un viaje así. Fenomenal el capítulo sobre los loros.
En gran parte de su libro (llamado en español "Cabezas verdes, manos azules"), nos narra sus años en Marruecos, donde a través de una beca de la Fundación Rockefeller, se dedica a mimetizarse entre el norte de África para grabar música y ritos locales, pasando por una serie de inconvenientes, uno cada vez más difícil que el anterior y aprendiendo sabiamente de las costumbres de los nativos.
La narrativa y descriptiva de Bowles son los verdaderos protagonistas de este libro que nos llena de frescura con sus diarios, sintiendo a veces hasta los olores que lo atormentan y descifrando las razones de porqué somos culturas tan diferentes en este planeta tan pequeño.
Como lo apunta en su Introducción, estamos tan confundidos los unos con los otros que consideramos extraños o jumbilis a todo aquel que no cumple con nuestra identidad... Pero también existe la posibilidad de que nosotros seamos los extraños para ellos.
Tal vez yo nunca haga un viaje al desierto, pero si lo hago, procuraré tener los ojos tan abiertos como este insólito viajero para desmenuzar el gusto por un viaje así. Fenomenal el capítulo sobre los loros.
July 16, 2012
After reading much of Bowles's oeuvre, I found this collection of his travel essays a bit disappointing. Bowles is, correctly, disapproving of colonialism, but relies too much on orientalist stereotyping for his descriptions of non-Western societies. This is one of those disappointing contradictions that everyone has, of course, but I find it especially disconcerting in a writer whose strong sense of personal ethics and delicate understanding of the complexities of intercultural and interpersonal relationships is so strongly evident in his fiction. In other words, I find Bowles much more engaging when he writes about cultural interactions on the personal level than on the societal level.
February 12, 2008
Even if you aren't traveling in a Muslim (or non-Christian country), read these essays if you want a good view into the mind of an expat writer grappling with his Western understanding of the non-Western world. The pieces on Morocco are great, particularly "Africa Minor" and "The Rif, to Music". It's fascinating to watch Bowles veer from orientalist stereotyping to a profound desire to grasp and respect the culture of North Africa, particularly as he narrates his quest to record native music from every corner of Morocco.
May 7, 2017
I enjoyed this a great deal more than his most well-known work, 'The Sheltering Sky'. 'Sheltering Sky' was extremely well-written and completely believable, but was also extremely depressing -- which I can only assume was Bowles' intention. This book, on the other hand, was about road trips, drugs and music -- and therefore a much more enjoyable read, in my view.
Bowles' reputation is earned -- he writes with penetrating lucidity and most of what he writes is extremely interesting.
Bowles' reputation is earned -- he writes with penetrating lucidity and most of what he writes is extremely interesting.
November 18, 2014
Such a captivating read that I missed my tram stop twice in two days. Style and atmosphere only Paul Bowles can convey.
March 6, 2025
Maratona de leituras Bowles para um artigo sobre Tanger.
February 18, 2016
Unlike Steinbeck, Bowles is probably not someone I would have wanted to know or travel with in real life. For one, he mentions eighteen suitcases at one point, and I'm like, seriously? Did I read that right? He writes like an intrepid traveler, but that one detail made me wonder if he was just another white imperialist type of traveler, which doesn't jibe with his writing at all. There is extremely poetic writing here, but the collection was too scattered for me to really enjoy as travel narrative.
August 15, 2008
This is a collection of nine travel essays on journeys to Central America, then Ceylon, India, Turkey, and Morocco, where the author lived for many years. His pieces on the Sahara and the Rif (the mountainous region of north Morocco) are especially good, since he spoke French and some Tamazight and had sympathy with the locals. Anybody that has read his credible novel The Sheltering Sky will know that Bowles keenly observes but leaves it up to the reader to draw conclusions.
December 13, 2007
traveling is in the small details, the big freedom, the things that go wrong, the stumbling-onto of things. paul bowles writes about it well.
how do you get the job of recording the tribal musics of morocco for the library of congress? what a job
and his description of one's experience of the sahara is EPIC
how do you get the job of recording the tribal musics of morocco for the library of congress? what a job
and his description of one's experience of the sahara is EPIC
June 13, 2015
Took this book of travel essays with me to Morocco and enjoyed seeing how much of what I was experiencing was reflected in those essays concerning Morocco. Paul Bowles had a better ability to experience discomfort than I did! All the essays are beautifully written and are not all set in Morocco, even though that was his home base for decades. Good stuff.
November 28, 2021
Bowles has a unique perspective as an expatriate musicologist who really seems to try to understand the people in the places he lives and travels. He also seems odd and isolated from both the Western and Eastern individuals he meets. His point of view is that the (mostly) Saharan countries he discusses are being ruined by their intellectual members who want to embrace Western ideals at the expense of destroying their native cultures. But until the last essays--including a meditation on solitude and silence in the Sahara, a comic discussion of parrots, and a stirring description of a music and dance performance--you don't really get clearly what all he enjoys about Morocco, Algeria, et al.
I would be very interested to read about the region today, 60+ years later. Any suggestions?
Why go? The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude he can't help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast, luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him....
I would be very interested to read about the region today, 60+ years later. Any suggestions?
July 7, 2018
I came to Paul Bowles through his recordings of various Moroccan music and field recordings he did for the Library Of Congress. And while the music he recorded has carried me away to strange, fantastic lands his writing just has not grabbed me as hard. So in recording all of this music, there was certainly adventure in getting to these places. These are mostly essays on his time and adventures in Northern Africa. Some essays I enjoyed more than others, "The Rif, To Music" I especially enjoyed. This is a book I would like to revisit in a year or two because I expected to like it more than I actually did. In times like this, sometimes I feel that it was me and not Paul Bowles that is the problem.
April 15, 2010
The most striking thing about Bowls's travel essays are the ways that he uses language. His sensibilities as a composer sing the mind into another land completely. Bowls was known for his daring travels, but approaches the lands with compassion and humor, as when he describes the pre-extremist Muslim chanters, whose law forbids music and so whose chants must not exceed a range of four notes. But he says, they reach every half note in between.
March 30, 2012
Love, love, love this book! I somehow often had Paul Bowles books when I traveled to faraway places; they were always very desired for trades so I ended up passing most of mine on. However, I knew I wanted to revisit these engrossing essays that taught me so much. It had gone out of print when I looked, and I would browse bookstores for years until they actually, finally released it again! I have to hang on to it this time. I learned so much from this book and ate it right up.
Read
October 26, 2007been wanting to read more from bowles after finding this quote cited somewhere:
"in a Western country, if a whole segment of the population desires, for reasons of protest, to isolate itself in a radical fashion from the society around it, the quickest and surest way is for it to replace alcohol with cannibus"
"in a Western country, if a whole segment of the population desires, for reasons of protest, to isolate itself in a radical fashion from the society around it, the quickest and surest way is for it to replace alcohol with cannibus"
December 10, 2012
I enjoyed this collection of eight travel essays, ranging from Morocco to Sri Lanka, and full of unexpected observations about people which applied to more than the people about whom the author was writing. Having seen the film The Sheltering Sky, I knew I wanted to read something by this author, and now I feel I may wish to read all I can get my hands on.
March 3, 2016
Bowles at his best - short travel essays through parts of the Moslem world in the 1950's. He documents well the bizarre and the wise, the outlandish characters he meets and the rapidly changing nature of the third world coming to grips with self-government, and the corrosive nature of western culture reaching these places for the first time. This is as good as travel-writing gets.
July 1, 2014
An account of his time in Morocco - excellent.
Recommended by Jarrah
Read this book in Townsville
Recommended by Jarrah
Read this book in Townsville
September 2, 2009
"Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem faint-hearted efforts"
This book is great, Paul Bowles is an amazing writer.
This book is great, Paul Bowles is an amazing writer.
July 17, 2011
Paul Bowels is awesome. Everyone (including me) should experience the baptism of solitude.
October 1, 2012
Bowles writes insightfully and beautifully but too soporifically to keep me turning pages. I bailed halfway through, but enjoyed all that I read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews