The Sheltering Sky

by Paul Bowles | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0880015829 Global Overview for this book
Registered by Vasha of Ithaca, New York USA on 1/28/2007
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Journal Entry 1 by Vasha from Ithaca, New York USA on Sunday, January 28, 2007
My intention to read this book is inspired by encountering it in The Oxford Book of Adventure Stories, among other places.

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The Sheltering Sky has started very promisingly so far. Already, by the tenth page, the description of the characters had gotten my attention. To be sure, they don’t seem like particularly pleasant people, but the writing is acute, I think.

Port Moresby — yeah, punny (nick)name — "did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler." As we soon find out, he takes great pride in acting like he immediately is familiar with every place he goes; and we also find out that this act is a thin façade. I suppose we soon will get some idea of what is driving him to travel constantly. (Added later: on page 129 is a wonderful passage -- "The landscape was there, and more than ever he felt he could not reach it. The rocks and the sky were everywhere, ready to absolve him, but as always he carried the obstacle within him. He would have said that as he looked at them, the rocks and the sky ceased being themselves, that in the act of passing into his consciousness, they became impure. It was slight consolation to be able to say to himself: 'I am stronger than they.'" It seems that Port’s experiences have something in common with a non-theistic spiritual quest. )

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Kit Moresby is obsessed with omens, and is frequently overwhelmed by anxiety. It rang true to me that "in intellectual discussions she was always the proponent of scientific method" without losing her deep-seated belief in omens: fear is an emotion that comes whether we want it to or not, and reason can almost never control it — instead, reason is involuntarily pressed into service coming up with some superficial reason for the fear. (This is the necessary background when, later, guilt and fear drive her into mental flight. Although "going mad" is not rare as a plot element, this is about the only use of it that has ever seemed convincing to me -- mostly, it is used without regard for psychological verisimilitude, but here it is organic.)

We have been introduced to two people who each love the other but are completely emotionally out of reach and out of phase. After a rare moment of near unity, in which they put different interpretations on viewing a sunset together, "It made [Kit] sad to realize that in spite of their so often having the same reactions, the same feelings, they never would reach the same conclusions, because their respective aims in life were almost diametrically opposed."

These two fragile characters rashly take themselves into a land, and among people, they can’t cope with. Disaster is inevitable, and makes for gripping reading.

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The notes at the back of the volume say that a publisher who rejected The Sheltering Sky said that it was "not a novel, but something else." Baffling! In what way does this narrative not resemble a novel??

Journal Entry 2 by Vasha at on Thursday, June 19, 2008

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