Plain Pleasures

by Jane Bowles

This collection of strikingly original and unsettling short stories combine bizarre characterization, sardonic wit and mastery of style.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, American, 20th Century, Classics, Novels, The United States Of America

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Born Jane Sydney Auer, Jane Bowles's total body of work consists of one novel, one play, and six short stories. Yet John Ashbery said of her: "It is to be hoped that she will be recognized for what she is: one of the finest modern writers of fiction in any language." Tennessee Williams called her the most underrated writer of fiction in American literature. During her lifetime and since her death in 1973, she has been considered a writer's writer, little known to the general public but with a loyal following of intensely devoted readers.

She was born in New York City on February 22, 1917, the daughter of Sidney Auer and Claire Stajer Auer. Her childhood was spent in Woodmere, Long Island. On her father's death in 1930, Jane and her mother moved back to Manhattan. As an adolescent she developed tuberculosis of the knee. Her mother took her to a sanatorium in Leysin, Switzerland, where she was put in traction for many months. During this time she developed an intense love of literature and an equally intense series of obsessions and fears. Upon her return to New York she began to experiment with writing a novel and with sexual adventures with men and women, though primarily with women.

In 1937 she met Paul Bowles, and in the following year they were married and set off for a honeymoon in Central America, which was to be, in part, the locale of her novel Two Serious Ladies. The Bowleses went on to Paris, where she started writing and at the same time visited lesbian bars. The marriage remained a sexual marriage for about a year and a half, but after that Jane and Paul lived separate sexual lives. After returning to New York in 1938, the Bowleses went on to Mexico, where Jane continued to work on her novel and also met Helvetia Perkins, who was to become her lover.

Two Serious Ladies was published in 1943. The reviews were mostly uncomprehending. Soon, Paul, who had been involved in the editing of Two Serious Ladies, began to write short stories, which were immediately published with great distinction. Jane, having published a few short stories, began to work on a novel, but ran up against a serious writer's block.

In 1947 Paul went to Morocco to work on The Sheltering Sky. Jane followed him there the following year. She continued to struggle to work, and published several short stories, including her masterpiece, "Camp Cataract," and began to work seriously on her play In the Summer House. In Tangier, where the Bowleses resided, Jane fell in love with a Moroccan peasant woman.

In the Summer House was performed on Broadway in 1953 to mixed reviews. Jane returned to Tangier and continued to try to write a novel, but her attention was primarily devoted to her love affair with Cherifa, the Moroccan woman, to affairs with other women and also to a social life in which she did a considerable amount of drinking.

In 1957 she suffered a serious stroke, which affected her sight and her capacity to imagine. Nevertheless, notebook after notebook attests to her still continuing struggle to try to write. Her condition worsened, and after hospitalizations in England, New York and Málaga, Spain, she was confined in the Clinica de Los Angeles in Málaga, where she died in 1973.

Yet it should be noted that despite this tragic story, her personality captivated many people. She was brilliant and witty, always doing and saying the unexpected thing. She was in every way as surprising as her work, one moment mystical, the next moment hilariously funny.

Copyright © 2003, by Millicent Dillon

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I never get tired of repeating, because it is so deliciously offensive to modern ears, Jane Bowles humorous self-invented nickname was Crippie the Kike Dyke, due to the fact that she had a tubercular leg that they had to fuse (don’t ask) so it didn’t bend. That was the Crippie bit, the rest of it is self-explanatory.



She wrote very little, probably not surprising, as she lived with her gay husband mostly in Morocco amidst clouds of kif, drinking gallons of gin, conducting many affairs and braving blizzards of psychological and physical health problems, such as strokes. And plus, she found writing to be a torture.

These stories, as everyone will tell you, are strange. I found them frustrating. She constructs intricate intimate worlds of borderline lunacy and just as you’re steeling yourself for the big dénouement you get left dangling. You want more in almost all these stories. But you don’t get it. One of them, “Camp Cataract” I was sure was going to become one of my all time favourites, and then – Jane, don’t leave me this way! Again! So I wasn’t sure I understood why JB is so rated by some critics (“one of the finest modern writers of fiction in any language” – John Ashberry; “she is a neglected genius” – New Yorker; “a major talent with a minor readership” – Guardian).

But I will be reading her apparently even stranger novel Two Serious Ladies later this year, which I am calling The Year Of Short Novels. (Long novels are okay, but they sure do take a long time to read. It has taken me years to realise this.)

A more truthful title for this collection would be Really Quite Odd Not Exactly Pleasures.

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her lifetime Jane Bowles was often overshadowed by her more famous husband, novelist Paul Bowles, although their actual relationship was far from conventional, both openly queer they had an “open” marriage and lived relatively independently. However, Jane Bowles was plagued by writer’s block and intense anxiety about her creative ability, this and a series of catastrophic strokes, seriously limited her career as an author. Plain Pleasures is a compilation of her short stories mostly produced in the 1940s, but not published until the sixties when Paul Bowles collected them together – something Jane apparently resisted. As Jane’s output was so small, he even added a non-fiction article “Everything is Nice” written for a women’s magazine, altering the point of view to make it appear fictional.

Despite the championship of playwright Tennessee Williams and poet John Ashbery, it seems Bowles was a perennial outsider, known for her wit but also her devastating self-deprecation – she frequently referred to herself as “Crippie, the kike dyke”. In her discussions of modernist women writers Heroines Kate Zambreno positioned Bowles as another of the “erased…mad wives of modernism”. I'm not sure if that's a fair assessment or not but the work included in this collection is filled with images of erased, outsider women, who are almost devoted to their own isolation and restlessness, yet sometimes unable to stifle intense, inner turmoil.

These are disconcerting pieces, the settings are comparatively ordinary, as are the characters, but there’s something disturbing about their underlying states of being. They seem to be living in parallel with one another talking at, rather than with, the people around them. These are essentially slice-of-life narratives, slenderly plotted, offering no easy resolutions. They’re presented in fairly unadorned prose but they’re also curiously formal and mannered. In the title piece Alva a widow in her 40s embarks on a date with a man who lives in her building but each has unacknowledged desires that can’t be realised with one another. “A Quarrelling Pair” a puppet play centred on two sisters revolves around a glass of milk, and has a quality that reminded me of Gertrude Stein.

For me the most memorable pieces were “Camp Cataract” and “A Stick of Green Candy”. There’s something of Tennessee Williams in “Camp Cataract” with its claustrophobic family apartment, strained relationships, casual cruelties and domestic power struggles. The family consists of three sisters, Harriet and Sadie, and Evy with her husband Bert. And it’s the only story that makes sense of comparisons to Katherine Mansfield in Chris Power’s introduction. Harriet for the first time ever has gone away on her own to Camp Cataract, ostensibly for a rest cure for her “nervous” problems but secretly as a small step towards personal freedom. But her sister Sadie unexpectedly follows her there and a curious, possible, tragedy occurs. It’s also the piece that contains the most overt queer themes, represented in the grudging relationship between Harriet and one of the women working at the camp.

“A Stick of Green Candy” was the last story Bowles ever completed, and is centred on a child Mary who chooses to play alone in an abandoned pit close to her home. Mary’s carefully organised world is disrupted by the appearance of a young boy who’s moved to a nearby house. Bowles seems to be playing with ideas around gender and power here but she’s also examining issues around imagination and creativity. I found Bowles’s stories interesting but slippery, their meaning difficult to grasp, and the style distanced and distancing. But they could also be unexpectedly powerful.

[Brodolomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Priznajem da sam posebna i da sa mnom nešto nije u redu“

Uvrnuto, iako nije najjasnije zašto je proza Džejn Bouls uvrnuta; nije ni formalno avangardna ni tematski bizarna. Likovi u njima donose odluke kao da su iznenada otkrili neku unapred smišljenu pomisao i to onu pomisao koja se istog časa mora prikriti od drugih, zato što se problem prilikom donošenja odluka ne tiče odabira pravog izbora već načina kako da se taj izbor prikrije i potisne. Stoga, ovde ne zbunjuju toliko nerazrešeni krajevi, koliko junaci koji odbijaju da se razvijaju u skladu sa očekivanjima koje ima čitalac. Oni su uvek nešto više ili nešto manje od očekivanog. A takav je i stil – izgleda jednostavan, pa čak i monotono svakodnevan u pripovedanju, a opet je vrlo nastran po izboru detalja, opažanjima i dijalozima na ivici apsurdnog.

Ovo izdanje sadrži sabrane priče (kojih ima svega četiri) + lutkarsku jednočinku + jedinu dramu koju je napisala. Džejn Bouls nikad nije i nikad neće uspeti da postane glavni tok ni kod čitalaca ni kod kritičara, jer kao i uvek kad je reć o kultu ili si upao u njega na prvoj stranici ili si u grupi „Bouuužee Petra, šta ti je?“.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Bowles wrote a uniquely aimless style of fiction about people who do not fit in and/or who are seeking what cannot be found (easily or at all). She was good with the non sequitur, and one could say that these stories in and of themselves are non sequiturs. They do not progress logically nor do they provide much resolution if any, instead tending to either trail off or end abruptly. This doesn't bother me. I actually had forgotten that I'd previously read two of the best stories in here: 'Camp Cataract' and 'A Stick of Green Candy' in this odd book that pairs two Bowles stories with two of Denton Welch's stories. I won't bother outlining any of the stories here because you really need to experience her style for yourself. Also, you should read Two Serious Ladies if you haven't already. Goodbye now.

[Enrique · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relato breve sobre el cual no se sabe nada prácticamente hasta que no llegas al punto final. Desconoces las intenciones del autor y del mensaje que quiere lanzarnos. Nos presenta una protagonista totalmente enigmática, pero claramente anticipada a su tiempo y reivindicativa de la causa feminista.

El final es un poco incógnita, pero es bueno.

Creo que puntúo de menos, ya que me ha sabido a poco, aunque lo cierto es que la intención de la autora es precisamente el impacto por esa brevedad, un poco contradictorio.

[Gabril · Rating 3 out of 5]

Secondo le parole della sua traduttrice (Paola Moretti) Jane Bowles “riproduce un mondo popolato da un’umanità stramba, tragica e dolorosamente divertente, composta in prevalenza di donne che fanno fatica a conformarsi, ad adeguarsi a quello che gli altri o la società vorrebbe per loro. Zitelle, lesbiche, madri oppressive, figlie insicure, sorelle asfissianti, bambine tiranniche, donne passionali, meschine, egoiste. Ubriacone. Donne che nonostante la loro grettezza e le loro brutture morali non risultano mai davvero odiose, solo umane e fallibili”.

Insomma: racconti a dir poco stravaganti, spiazzanti, eccentrici, dove niente è mai come ti aspetti. Un’esperienza di lettura dove bisogna accettare di perdere l’orientamento; e poi lasciarsi andare a molti piccoli naufragi.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Although the sun had sunk behind the houses, the sky was still luminous and the blue of the wall had deepened. She rubbed her fingers along it: the wash was fresh and a little of the powdery stuff came off. And she remembered how once she had reached out to touch the face of a clown because it had awakened some longing. It had happened at a little circus, but not when she was a child.'

- Jane Bowles, Everything Is Nice

Jane Bowles' short stories are sharply observed and yet somehow slantwise in the telling. The stories in this slim volume often look at the chaos and madness lurking beneath the surface of prosaic characters leading outwardly mundane lives. There's the prim old widow of the title tale, who professes to prefer 'plain pleasures' and a simple life over the glamorous aspirations of her sister, only to get drunk, become flirty and finally pass out in a strange bed the first time a man asks her out in years. 'Everything Is Nice' plays on culture-shock, as an American woman adrift in Morocco tries to interact with the local women. 'Camp Cataract' is something of a tour de force, exploring hidden conflicts in a middle class household and the deep yearning for escape and potential for madness in its respectable middle-aged characters. It builds to one of the most telling and ambiguous climaxes in the book; the phrase 'telling and ambiguous' could serve as a description for the virtues of Bowles' sharp, quirky prose. To my mind, the finest story here is 'Hard Green Candy', which is a snapshot of the moment when a child's imagination starts to die in the face of the grown-up world and the process of growing up.

I haven't read Bowles' only novel, Two Serious Ladies, but these stories certainly serve as a good incentive to do so.

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

From 1966
"Plain Pleasure" means not being fancy or complicated. It is literally about cooking potatoes in the back yard.
I must admit, I found these stories inscrutable. I read Jane's one novel, Two Serious Ladies, and that was an unspoken tale of lesbianism. So I think that is the case here, in the "Camp Cataract" section. Harriet goes there to be with a waitress named Beryl who always wears "plus-fours" (short trousers).

[Baz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this. The eccentric women in stories written with an almost perfect clarity. The singular vision, the buoyancy, the unpredictability, the darkly gleaming energy. These stories, like her novel Two Serious Ladies, are simultaneously disturbing and delightful. Almost absurd but deadly serious.

For lovers of uncommonly brilliant weirdos like Muriel Spark and Flannery O’Connor.

The best. A top read of my year for sure.

[Babs · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are books that I have read and didn't really Get. A few of the stories in this collection by Jane Bowles I didn't really 'Get' either, but rather than tossing the book aside and blowing out my cheeks because some pretentious magic realism author wasted 10 hours of my life while I read his books, Plain Pleasures does not fit in to the same category. This is the only book I have read, didn't fully understand, but still think is wonderful. I feel like I just KNOW there is more in it that I was able to fully appreciate - further meaning and a more finely-tuned sensibility than I can... 'Get'.

Jane Bowles is highly original, witty, beyond melancholic - I mean possibly quite darkly fucked up - and I have never read stories like hers before. Her husband Paul Bowles, himself a fantastic writer, helped Jane with editing one of the short stories in this collection, and he claimed to have not understood it either. I am pleased to say that I would not have noticed it myself had I not read it in the introduction, but all the short stories in Plain Pleasures are about women. All completely different women, in different contexts and roles, of different nationalities and never one character in any way resembling another.

I would very much recommend this book, although if you read it as I did it's possible you might find it frustrating: her clever words and descriptions conjure up complex and macabre emotions and human states, but ones which are nevertheless intangible and difficult to hold and examine.

[Krys · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been a while since I read Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles, which, to my mind, is one of my formative texts as a reader. I forgot how much pleasure I derived from Janes Bowles' sentences, which are filled with disarming non-sequiturs that unsettle the normative logic in the reality that I inhabit. I also forgot how funny she really is. Literature is abound with misfits, but few are truly strange like Bowles' characters, who roam aimlessly while often suffering some form of mental turmoil and whose motives remain mysterious even to themselves. I just wish she had left more writing behind in this world.

Although the sun had sunk behind the houses, the sky was still luminous and the blue of the wall had deepened. She rubbed her fingers along it: the wash was fresh and a little of the powdery stuff came off. And she remembered how once she had reached out to touch the face of a clown because it had awakened some longing. It had happened at a little circus, but not when she was a child.

[Arax Miltiadous · Rating 4 out of 5]

είναι αλήθεια πως δεν περίμενα και πάρα πολλά διαβάζοντας το οπισθόφυλλο του βιβλίου, έτσι απόλαυσα ιδιαιτέρως την ευχαρίστηση της ανάγνωσης των κειμένων του.
Η Bowles γράφει λιτά, εμποτίζει την κάθε φράση της με μια λεπτή ειρωνεία και με απόχρωση σαρκασμού που αμέσως αμέσως μεταμορφώνει την ίδια την λιτότητα της σε ατέρμονη θάλασσα απύθμενου βάθους.
Επίσεις , η ελαφριά μελαγχολία που αναδύεται μέσα από τις περιγραφές των ηρώων της και των ονείρων τους, προσδίδει μια βαρύτητα που σε κρατάει καθηλωμένο και που παρότι στην αρχή της ανάγνωσης ήσουν πεπεισμένος πως δεν θα από λάβεις κάτι από αυτό , ξαφνικά σε βρισκεις να κατάβυθίζεσαι όλο και περισσότερο στην δυνη της ιστορίας.
Γιαυτό λοιπόν τα 4 αστερακια και είθε τέτοιοι ασταθείς στον χαρακτήρα και επιρρέπεις στα πάθη, άνθρωποι, να συνεχίζουν να υπάρχουν και να αποτελούν την γενεσιουργό μητρα της Τέχνης!

[Saburi Pandit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such Consuming stories with no end. No conclusive ending at all. Just characters who come across ordinary onthe surface but have extremely twisted life inside themselves. You feel so much more with the kind of writing and fragmented stories. Abstract ideas and plain ansurdity. Brilliant piece of work.

[anotherseriouslady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly weird.

[Papatya ŞENOL · Rating 4 out of 5]

karşımızda yine günlük yaşamın sıradanlığında pırıl pırıl ayrıntılarla bezeli bir öykü kitabı. üstelik yazarı yazma sürecini acı verici olarak nitelendiriyor. okuyucuyu bir yerden yakalayıp, bir süre götürüp orta yerde bırakıyor gibi bir duygulanım. ama şikayetçi değilim tabii, anlamlandıramadığım 2 öykü dışında benim için oldukça ufuk açıcı bir okuma deneyimiydi. öykü sevenlere tavsiye ederim; ama gerçekten sevenlere ve giriş, gelişme, sonuç kıskacından kurtulmuşlara. ayrıca şu kapağın güzelliğine bakar mısınız?

[Havovi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short Stories prefaced by a very warm introduction. And some disturbing stories about the realities that are inhabited by our minds, and the somewhat different ones inhabited by our bodies.

[Mario G · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories all all great; it's a shame that Jane Bowles wrote so little in her life. Her point of view is singularly weird and her stories are suspenseful and unsettling. To read her feels like reading transcripts of dreams.
My favorites: the ominous, startling "Plain Pleasures" and "Camp Cataract", the wicked heart of this little collection.

[Will Fassler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in a Jane Bowles collection after reading about it in the art of cruelty. I’m surprised this was chosen as an example of a cruel story but I agree that it bubbles under the surface. I think a lot of people would find the ending unsatisfying but I think it is more unsettling and asks to be pondered 🕺

[Ryan Schwartz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all of these stories were very memorable, but I did enjoy “camp cataract”. Bowles writes with a dry wit that is probably the standout feature of her writing, but I just don’t always find myself able to really connect with short stories. It’s a shame she only wrote one novel! She was quite the interesting person.

[Bridget Bonaparte · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved these short stories I can’t believe she wrote them in the 30s. Very much a Shirley Jackson energy here without any of the spookiness. Her characters are women who do whatever they like, damn the consequences, even if they are on the whole very nervous women. All of these stories are strikingly original in tone. but now I’ve read almost everything by Jane Bowles it’s a horrid shame there’s not more.

[Billy Degge]

Its a real shame jane struggled to write - these are all bangers.

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

¡¡¡¡¡vivan las escritoras raritas!!!!

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting concepts in the stories but I just didn’t connect to the writing style.

[cd · Rating 3 out of 5]

'her attitude was not an astonishing one, since like many people she conceived of her life as separate from herself; the road was laid out always a little ahead of her by sacred hands, and she walked down it without a question. this road, which was her life, would go on existing after her death, even as her death existed now as she lived.' - Camp Cataract
'"well," said the traveller, 'nobody gets as much kissing as they would like to get. most people are frustrated. you'd be surprised at the number of people in my country who are frustrated and good-looking at the same time."' - A Guatemalan Idyll

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm indifferent to most of these except the unforgettable title story, which is easily Jane Bowles' best work alongside her novel Two Serious Ladies. Bowles writes prose that's always locally interesting but globally obscure: I rarely know where's she's going or what she's getting at. But then I'll run into a sentence like this, from "Everything is Nice":

Zodelia seemed bewildered, and then bored, and she decided she had somehow ruined the conversation by mentioning small porcupines.

There few writers as consistently surprising and just as few who can write the "real freaks" she believed fiction writing should aspire to.

[Ronny De Schepper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ik wilde beginnen met “ook na het lezen van de bundel weet ik nog altijd niet wat de ‘eenvoudige genoegens’ van Jane Bowles zijn.” Niet dat het zo’n moeilijke verhalen waren (eerder integendeel), maar waarover gingen die nu eigenlijk? En dan, bij het laatste verhaal, werd me dan toch de sleutel toegeschoven: “Zoals veel kinderen fantaseerde ze dat ze het bevel voerde over een regiment,” zo staat er (p.148). “Maar ze deed nooit mee aan spelletjes van buurkinderen; ze speelde liever helemaal alleen…” En daar gaat het inderdaad in bijna elk verhaal over. Maar waarom ze het de moeite vond om die “verhalen” (die er geen zijn) op te tekenen, zal voor mij wel altijd een raadsel blijven.

[Gül Özdemir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cataract Kampı sanırım karakterlerle empati kurabildiğim tek hikaye buydu. Sonunun net bir şekilde yazıldığı tek hikayede buydu. O yüzden en sevdiğim hatta tek sevdiğim hikaye buydu.

[Elías Casella · Rating 3 out of 5]

No acepten ediciones de Anagrama ni regaladas.

[Vel Veeter]

This is a kind of split review of both the short story collection Plain Pleasures by the American writer Jane Bowles and other for the various extra material published in her collected works as notebooks and unpublished pieces. The opening story of this collection which is the title story starts with a very odd and curious scene in which a woman invites her neighbor over to eat roasted potatoes that she cooks in an impromptu fire in her backyard. I don’t think this predates barbeque grills, but it feels like a truly odd little scene, and of course it becomes more and more odd as the story goes. Other stories in the collection follow a lot of the same patterns, a curious moment turns into an even more curious larger moment down the line. There are also stories built from Jane Bowles’s travels with her husband Paul Bowles, in the Middle East, a setting he spent a lot more time writing upon.

There’s also the extra material published here, and as a catalog of addition writing, as it shows up in a collected works (which I am reading from) this material is of interest, but not particularly amounting to much on its own. This includes snippets of stories, character sketches (a kind of writing I’ve never enjoyed), and piecemeal work leftover from journals. Given the relatively small amount of writing that Bowles did publish in her life (this volume is not 500 pages all told), this material probably reflects what was already cut from a relatively small output in the first place. That said, I do appreciate it from a more scholarly viewpoint and certainly as a kind of completionist, which I unsurprisingly am