In comparison to Burroughs' Tangier, this presents a colorful, significantly less drastic and obscene picture of Tangier.

Nothing seems serious; the characters are exaggerated, yet quirky and entertaining.

Unfortunately, the last quarter is rather useless, but at least the Moroccan characters are multi-layered.

This portrayal offers a different perspective on Tangier, one that perhaps focuses more on the lighter side of the city and its inhabitants.

While it may lack the intensity and rawness of Burroughs' work, it still manages to capture some of the essence of Tangier in its own unique way.

The exaggerated characters add a touch of humor and playfulness, making it an enjoyable read despite its flaws.

Overall, it provides an interesting contrast to Burroughs' more well-known depiction of Tangier.

After the truly dazzling "The Sheltering Sky", this work from the great Paul Bowles unfortunately disappoints. It presents a dark and pessimistic tone throughout. The plot, if one can even truly identify it, is rather frustrating. Indeed, it is yet another tale about a restless and bored American, wallowing in his own state of torpor and ennui. He decides to break free from his metaphorical glass prison in America and attempts to find himself in some exotic location, stripped down to its bare essentials. And, as expected, the result is an inexorable slide into misery, insanity, and a desultory demise, all taking place in a very strange and faraway land. There seems to be no hope of coming back.

I had hoped to know more about that specific time and place. However, that information was lacking. I also would have liked to have a deeper understanding of the characters. Sadly, that too was not forthcoming. Additionally, I desired to know more about the background. But again, it was not provided. Even so, there might still be one valid reason to read this book: if you have never experienced really great hash, this book can give you a sense of how it feels. Nevertheless, I struggle to see the overall point of it.

The main character, Dyar, is truly a lost soul. He is constantly confused, constantly makes the wrong decisions, and is constantly unable to apply linear logic to anything. He is also painfully self-aware and always socially inept. As for the other characters, they seem more like caricatures, despite there seemingly being many opportunities to bring them to life.

The only reason I would recommend you read this book is so that you won't make the mistake of recommending it to your friends. However, it should be noted that the bones of the story are excellent, and there are flashes of brilliance in the prose. That is precisely why it receives two stars instead of none. I truly hope that someday someone will take this basic outline and do justice to it, creating a more fulfilling and engaging work.

PS. I must add that a good reason to read this book is to gain some knowledge about the culture, time, and place of a locale that most of us never give much thought to. In that sense, it does contribute to building our knowledge base, which is indeed a positive aspect.

Darkness and interior explorations are the hallmarks of Bowles' work, and he does them with a unique flair.

In his stories, the characters often find themselves in the midst of darkness, both literal and figurative. This darkness serves as a backdrop for their inner struggles and self-discovery.

Bowles delves deep into the human psyche, exploring the hidden desires, fears, and secrets that lie within. His writing is a journey into the unknown, a search for the truth that lies beneath the surface.

Whether it's a desolate desert landscape or a cramped room in a seedy hotel, Bowles' descriptions bring the settings to life, making the reader feel as if they are there, experiencing the darkness and the interior explorations along with the characters.

His work is not for the faint of heart, but for those who are willing to take the plunge and explore the darker side of human nature.

Exceptional.

This book was born in the same year as I was, and I truly didn't anticipate that it would have endured the test of time. However, I couldn't have been more incorrect. The writing is remarkably insightful, crisp, and immediate, possessing a contemporary feel. Despite the distant setting of a dying colonial, post-war Morocco, and the seventy years that divide the mores and culture of then and now, the author manages to create a vivid and engaging narrative.

Bowles had an intense and vivid perception of the ambience and characters in Tangier, which propels the story forward. Moreover, he is a master of psychological insight, seamlessly switching between each character's innermost thoughts, feelings, hopes, and fears while also describing their external appearance and idiosyncrasies with a wickedly comic accuracy.

The plot arcs through a gentle yet tense social comedy, and then quite suddenly (spoiler alert) descends into a bleak, existential drug-fueled denouement. It is truly fabulous. Bowles is a rare talent, and I simply can't wait to read the remainder of this book and his short stories as well.

The book under review is not as captivating as "The Sheltering Sky." However, it does have a certain charm in its evocative language that vividly描绘s the landscape.

Personally, I found there were too many scenes in the book that were drug-induced and had a slowed-down sense of time. Moreover, the main character seems rather passive. He does nothing for most of the time, and even when he attempts to take action, he ultimately ends up doing nothing.

Despite these flaws, there are parts of a good story here. It tells the tale of an uncertain young man, which in some ways reminds me of the work of Fitzgerald.

Overall, it's a decent read, but it may not be truly worth it unless you are a dedicated reader of multiple Paul Bowles novels. There are better works out there that offer a more engaging and fulfilling reading experience.

I was 18 years old and living in Morocco when I devoured all of Bowles' works in a frenzy. It was my first taste of the world, my first love, and a time of many other firsts. His books have remained etched in my mind like few others from that era. Just opening them now, I can smell the thuya wood and the smoke from the snail-sellers, and see the hotel room of a girl I haven't seen in nearly two decades.

These books seem to exist outside of any identifiable tradition. Somewhat Beat-ish, yet very different from the Beats who stayed in America, they possess a voice that is both American and distinctly foreign, the voice of an expat. Deeply knowledgeable of other cultures, but never allowing the reader inside those cultures, they are instead about alienation and the impossibility of true cross-cultural understanding.

To me, what sets Bowles apart is his pitiless control over narrative shape, even when it comes at the expense of his characters. His stories don't neatly come together at the end like they "should." Instead, they peter out in scenes of bleak, compositional simplicity, like woodcuts or etchings. At 18, I thought The Sheltering Sky was constructed like no other novel, and nearly twenty years later, I still feel the same.

His short story "A Distant Episode" features a spasm of violence as appallingly rococo as anything in American Psycho, but it felt significant and real to me in a way that Brett Easton Ellis never did. And then there's Let It Come Down, the book of his that I admire most. Everything about it, from the title and its source in Macbeth, to the unforeseeable climax, impresses me.

Along the way, Bowles does what he does best. His descriptions of altered states are the best I've read, and were especially important to me at the time when I felt constantly high from travel and new experiences. He apparently wrote his toughest scenes while spaced-out on majoun, which perhaps gives his writing its strange quality of inhuman, distant brilliance. There is something cold about him, easy to admire but hard to love. He is terribly underrated, truly one of the most fascinating writers when it comes to constructing a story. The ending of Let It Come Down hit me in the gut when I first read it, and every time I revisit the climactic paragraphs, I get the same feeling. Like all of Bowles' most memorable moments, it is shocking because it is impossible to understand, not the prose which is always clear and sharp, but the motives and the aimlessness of what happens. He reminds us how unpredictable people are, how un-novelistic life is, and how unknowable even our own behavior can be.

“Decent for a second effort but the plot was slow and clunky.”

I will commend the author for the quality of his writing. After all, this was only his second publication following an extensive musical career. Bowles was well-known for his creative and evocative passages. Having known his reputation beforehand, I was aware that he was at his strongest when describing landscapes and urban environments, blending in his own brand of magical realism, which he no doubt got from his experimentation with Moroccan narcotics. You really can see the beginnings of this gift in the work, but it ultimately falls short.

The biggest issues I had with the story were the pacing and the seemingly lack of interest Bowles took in engaging the reader. The characters are simple and merely feel like different versions of the author himself. Then, all at once, in a forced fashion, he will try and mesmerize you with descriptions of hallucinations and sensations from drug-use that are clearly taken from his own direct experiences. This does not hide the rather weak themes, characters, and expositions found elsewhere in the book. The last technical weakness is that his dialogue is very empty. The quality of a great writer is to craft stories so that when characters are interacting, there is always something at stake or at least an attempt to progress the story. In this, he came up short.

To drive home the issue with the pedestrian pacing, I’ll say it is most evident in that the novel takes 12 - 14 chapters to begin tackling the point its writer set out to make. That point being basic, even by the standards of his own time. Bowles, although sometimes showcasing great prose, meanders through large swaths of writing with seemingly no intent of moving the plot along. Much of the early parts of the book are inconsequential to the plot as he tries to set up the main character as slipping towards nihilism, which was tedious to get through. I found myself for much of the book unengaged with the material and wanting to quit. However, I stayed through to the end, which was alright, but it was a chore to get there. If you have a reader's patience and intend to study a great American author, then give it a try. If not, then try another one of his many works.

Excellent, atmospheric read. It offers a captivating experience that draws you in from the very beginning.

I didn't like it as much as The Sheltering Sky, but then again, I don't think I like any book as much as that one. This particular work is different. It focuses on an American banker who relocates to Tangier and the International Zone prior to Moroccan independence. Slowly but surely, he gets swallowed up by the place.

When you read Bowles, you can't help but be transported to Africa, specifically Morocco in this instance. You can feel, smell, and hear it all wafting up to you from the pages. In this case, the wonderful closeness of the sea permeates the entire narrative. The crashing waves and the ever-changing view of Spain across the Mediterranean add an extra layer of vividness.

Overall, it's good stuff that leaves a lasting impression.

Nice read. It was not overly difficult to engage with, and I truly loved the tone of voice that was employed throughout the piece. The author managed to create an interesting and engaging narrative that held my attention from the beginning. However,

the last 90 pages or so, along with the ending, somewhat marred the overall experience for me. It felt as if the story took a bit of a wrong turn, and the conclusion was not as satisfying as I had hoped. There were certain plot developments that seemed a bit rushed or forced, and it left me with a sense of disappointment.

Despite this, I still think that the majority of the book was enjoyable, and I would recommend it to others. It had its strengths, and the tone and writing style were definitely亮点. I just wish that the ending had been more polished and fulfilling.

Terrifyingly excellent. Bowles has an extraordinary ability to capture the complete dislocation that comes with being an expat, a feat achieved by very few others. He doesn't stop there; he also masterfully nails the experience of being high out of one's mind. I have an intense love for this book due to its remarkable female characters who are strong and yet digressive, and its male characters who are spineless and empty. But it's not just the characters; the evocative language used by Bowles is simply captivating. He is truly a writer who is well ahead of his time. His prose is electric, sending shivers down the reader's spine. Gahhh -- I loved this book with all my heart. It's a literary masterpiece that deserves to be read and cherished.

I have a great appreciation for the writing style of Paul Bowles. His vivid descriptions of old Tangier and Morocco in the 1950s truly bring those places to life.

However, I found myself getting bogged down in some of the descriptive internal rantings of the main character, Dyar, especially during a very long session of hashish smoking. I understand that the book was about the ultimate downfall of Dyar, who came to Morocco to escape his mundane life in the U.S.

Nevertheless, the last four to five chapters of the book were a bit of a letdown. The ending didn't quite go over well, but it did give the reader the opportunity to imagine what might happen to Dyar.

Overall, I am giving 4 stars for the writing style. I did enjoy the story for the most part, although some themes were not resolved or ended as well as I would have liked.

I look forward to exploring more of Paul Bowles' works in the future to see if his other books offer a more satisfying reading experience.

So often, the synopses on the backs of books fail to truly capture the essence of the book. I suspect this is usually by design and perhaps understandable. But it seems especially true of Bowles. Even a phrase like “descent into nihilism” isn’t entirely wrong for this novel. Nor is it incorrect to say that his novels deal with “the dilemma of the outsider in an alien society.” I admit that I'm partial to Norman Mailer's blurb on the back of my copy of The Delicate Prey, although it's possible he was simply making campaign promises while running for mayor of New York: "Paul Bowles has opened the world of Hip. He let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the Square...the call of the orgy, the end of civilization."

After reading three of Bowles’s novels, I have found myself wondering what truly compelled him to write them. This is just my speculation, of course, but I think his books are most importantly about describing certain states of consciousness. That is to say, communicating a fairly specific orientation towards life.

Maybe this is why some reviews here claim that “nothing happens” in this novel. I completely disagree, even on the surface level. I think this is one of the things that makes Bowles a great novelist. He doesn’t ignore the outside world. Nelson Dyar, the New York banker who tries to start a new life in Tangier, in a matter of days after his arrival, finds himself caught up in various situations. He pursues a young Moroccan girl, avoids a malicious American woman who spends most of the day in bed, takes money for services not yet rendered from a Russian spy, consumes a hallucinogenic drug with an attractive American socialite, and casually observes that his new employer looks anxiously in both directions when opening the office door, and so on. The point is that there's a colorful cast of idiosyncratic characters here, like in Dostoevsky, and the inescapable realities of money, sex, and politics aren't ignored. There are plots, counter-plots, money and possessions changing hands, secrets, corruption, and chance encounters in the street. But on the other hand, as in Dostoevsky, the real tension lies within the characters.

The characters in each of the three Bowles novels I’ve read are preoccupied with an idea that remains fairly consistent. They feel they are “outside” life, isolated as individual consciousnesses. But what would it mean to get “inside” life? His characters sometimes get hints of an answer, usually related to music or a desolate landscape. Take this scene of a character with the last name Burroughs (Bowles knew William Burroughs, and I’m sure there’s a story there) listening to music in The Spider’s House.

…she felt that the place represented an undefinable but very real danger. It meant nothing, never could mean anything, to Polly Burroughs. For that to happen she would have to go back, back, she did not know how many thousands of years, but back far enough for it to denote some sort of truth. If she possessed any sort of religion at all, it consisted in remaining faithful to her convictions, and one of the basic beliefs upon which her life rested was the certainty that no one must ever go back. All living beings were in process of evolution, a concept which to her meant but one thing: an unfolding, an endless journey from the undifferentiated to the precise, from the simple toward the complex, and in the final analysis from the darkness to the light. What she was looking down upon here tonight…all belonged unmistakably to the darkness, and therefore it had to be wholly outside her and she outside it. There could be no temporizing or meditation. It was down there, spread out before her, a segment of the original night, and she was up here observing it, actively conscious of who she was, and very intent on remaining that person, determined to let nothing occur that might cause her, even for an instant, to forget her identity.

Bowles’s characters exist in relation to a certain idea of eternity. Throughout their lives, there's ebb and flow. They are drawn to it and fear it, often at the same time. Sometimes it seems far off and sometimes very near, capable of surging forth and obliterating individuality. But it’s out there, always, its transmissions to the soul as ambiguous as the blinking red light of a radio tower, exerting its mysterious effect, tugging at consciousness. It’s what an esoteric Russian fascist of the Silver Age might have called a “missing totality”, or what we might call nirvana, except that the mental image I associate with nirvana - a candle swiftly blown out - is too painless for Bowles. Pain and fear are inescapable elements in his stories. In fact, I would say he has written some of the most quietly unsettling scenes in literature, like the one where Port and Kit are looking out at the desert in The Sheltering Sky.

"You know", said Port, and his voice sounded unreal, as voices are likely to do after a long pause in an utterly silent spot, "the sky here's very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it's a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind."
Kit shuddered slightly as she said: "From what's behind?"
"Yes."
"But what is behind?" Her voice was very small.
"Nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night."
"Please don't talk about it now..."
"You know what?" he said with great earnestness. "I think we're both afraid of the same thing. And for the same reason. We've never managed, either one of us, to get all the way into life. We're hanging on to the outside for all we're worth, convinced we're going to fall off at the next bump. Isn't that true?"

Nelson Dyar in Let it Come Down has the same problem of not being able to get into life. He has worked at a bank in New York for over ten years, having obtained the job in the wake of the Depression due to his father’s connections, and has been told he should be grateful. But what is gratefulness, anyway? His first act of violence is to leave his job at the bank for a job at a tourist agency in Tangier, run by an old acquaintance. Since, as Tobias Wolff wrote, Bowles’s stories “move with the inevitability of myth”, the reader never feels he could have done anything different. If it hadn’t been Tangier, it would have been Istanbul or Moscow. It’s like the story of Mr. Kurtz - being able to act with impunity brings certain aspects of himself to the surface...but they were always there, waiting. And so the real suspense in this novel is the sequence of mental events that takes place inside Dyar, which might sound very boring and abstract, except for how committed (or obsessive, depending on your view) Bowles is at describing these states precisely, lucidly. There is a logical consistency in how each slightly different state follows from the previous one. The mystery is what set the sequence in motion in the first place, which carries with it a whiff of the uncanny, of the dark matter we can observe only in its consequences.

For a while he sat quite still in the dark, with nothing in his mind save an awareness of the natural sounds around him; he did not even realize he was welcoming these sounds as they washed through him, that he was allowing them to cleanse him of the sense of bitter futility which had filled him for the past two hours. The cold wind eddied around the shrubbery at the base of the wall; he hugged himself but did not move. Shortly he would have to rise and go back into the light…For the moment he stayed sitting in the cold. “Here I am”, he told himself once again, but this time the melody, so familiar that its meaning was gone, was faintly transformed by the ghost of a new harmony beneath it, scarcely perceptible and at the same time, merely because it was there at all, suggestive of a direction to be taken which made those three unspoken words more than a senseless reiteration. He might have been saying to himself: “Here I am and something is going to happen.” The infinitesimal promise of a possible change stirred him to physical movement…

World War II is mentioned in only a few sentences in this novel, and here is one of them: “They went off to Brazil, the war came, and they stayed there until it was over.” Does this mean that Bowles is, as Orwell described Henry Miller, “inside the whale”, pursuing his sick obsessions while ignoring the outside world? I don’t really think so. Because Bowles, intentionally or not, in pursuing his sick obsessions, ends up capturing something about his era (and maybe ours, as well) that, if not wholly representative, seems to me at least significant. Dyar is tired of feeling like a victim. He’s overwhelmed by the burden of freedom and having to fashion a life out of a meaningless job that collapses time and suppresses his personality. A decade passes like a day. Any action - as long as it’s decisive and assertive, made with conviction - is better than this lifetime of passivity and cowardice. Lee Harvey Oswald might have felt the same way. Bowles’s presentation of a character whose options to interact with the world are reduced to two poles - sadism or masochism, to act or be acted upon - reminds me of Steps by Jerzy Kosinski (which is also, I believe, about the feeling of lost human agency in the wake of World War II). I’m also reminded of Erich Fromm’s idea, in Escape from Freedom, that sadism and masochism are two sides of the same coin, both mechanisms of escape; and that the need to escape was one of the reasons people followed totalitarian leaders like Hitler - the obliteration of the individual self in a mass movement (masochism), and at the same time permission to do violence unto others (sadism). I don’t know - could be someone’s idea of eternity.
Kosinski and Bowles are also linked in my mind because of the maliciousness of their respective visions of the universe. The worlds they created are more frightening than anything in Lovecraft. But just as the more a proprietor of an occult bookstore learns about the Old Ones the more insane he becomes, the simple fact that you have knowledge of Bowles’s vision is discomforting - because what if he’s right? The fact that the vision was conceivable, and that it is so persuasive and vivid, seems to make it more likely, somehow.
But while Steps is hypnotic in its voice, Let it Come Down is hypnotic in its atmosphere - an atmosphere that, a few days after finishing the novel, is still with me. I had the good fortune last weekend to fall asleep around 7pm and wake up at midnight. It happened to be raining. I went downstairs, made some coffee, opened the window, and read most of the last part of this book. The effect is hard to describe. I found myself staring at the coffee cup, listening to the drops of rain, slowly reading sentences like, “Up there was a city of little rooms, a city inside a pocket of darkness, but there were windows in the walls you could not see, and beyond these the sun shone down on an outer city built of ice.” Reading Bowles can have an actual physical effect - you feel that you are suffering with illness like Port in The Sheltering Sky, or under the influence of a drug like Dyar in Let it Come Down. Like Port, Dyar discovers what’s behind the sheltering sky, the fiction of his personality. Nothing…absolute night.